


FORTY YEARS

by charlie4short



Series: Dean's Hell [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Anal Sex, Blood and Torture, Burns, Cannibalism, Canon Compliant, Child Abuse, Cutting, Dark, Dark fic, Dean Whump, Dean in Hell, Demonic Possession, Double Anal Penetration, Electrocution, Emotionally Hurt Dean Winchester, F/M, Force Choking, Forced Ejaculation, Forced Erotic Asphyxiation, Forced Prostitution, Fratricide, Genital Torture, Heavy BDSM, Hell Fic, Hellhounds, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermic Dean Winchester, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Medical Torture, Multi, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-con wincest, Other, Out of Body Experiences, Porn With Plot, Psychological Torture, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rats, Rough Sex, Smut, Stabbing, Strangulation, Suicide, Tortured Dean, Torturer Dean, Underage Rape/Non-con, Vivisection, centipede sounding, nongraphic underage incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-03-04 20:39:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 33
Words: 53,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlie4short/pseuds/charlie4short
Summary: What really happened to Dean in Hell?  After thirty years, why did  he finally break?





	1. Prologue: Alastair's Special Toy

**Author's Note:**

> The gang rape that Alastair alludes to and Dean experiences flashbacks to is described in "Breathe" (chapter 20, I think).
> 
> The chapter titles are all Metallica songs. You may dub me 'unforgiven' after reading this. ;P

* * *

 

 

“You _are_ special, Dean, I’ll give you that.”  Alastair’s lisping compliment was accompanied by a tilt of the head and shake of a single bony digit.

He paced around the nude man strapped to the rack in front of him, face thoughtful.

Dean held still, eyes locked on the blood-spattered wall across the room, refusing to show any concern as Hell’s most respected torturer moved out of his line of sight.

A cold finger traced down his naked back, and Dean closed his eyes against the sense of revulsion that rose in his chest.

“You see,” and Alastair’s breath was hot against the younger man's neck, “you learned something straight away that most never do.”  He continued the trajectory his pacing had initiated, trailing the tip of one icy finger over Dean’s skin as he moved to stand before the bound man.

He paused, nail raking almost tenderly at the curling silk of Dean’s pubic hair.

Although they were now eye-to-eye, the hunter looked right through him.

“You’ve learned that pain without fear has no real power.”

Alastair opened his fist, palm easing down to cup his toy’s genitalia, the gesture either a threat or a promise.

 

Or perhaps both.

 

 _Just get the fuck on with it,_ Dean fumed, but did not allow his impatience to manifest into something that Alastair could use against him.

Chuckling, the demon squeezed, nails turning to claws, digging into sensitive flesh.  He kept his eyes locked on Dean’s as he slowly began to twist and pull, blood running across his wrist in crimson furrows.

 

Although Dean’s chest hitched, his expression didn’t change.  

_Screaming won’t help._

_Gonna hurl.  Hope this time the bastard doesn’t move out of the way quick enough._

 

Alastair pulled harder, dug his talons in deeper, knowing his victim’s pain had to be excruciating, detecting none of it in the Winchester’s vacant expression.

 

 _Be over soon.  Be over soon._  It was a mantra that had worn a permanent track in Dean’s brain.

 

Alastair jerked viciously, stepping to the side as  he did so, raising  his prize up and away from the stream of vomit that erupted from his newly emasculated toy.

 

Dean turned his head to keep the acidic fluid from burning his open wound as his stomach continued to convulse uselessly.

_Be over soon.  Be over soon._

He raised his head, eyes vacant, ignoring the mangled flesh that Alastair held before him in a triumphant flourish.

 _Not the first time, won’t be the last._  

 

_Be over soon.  Be over soon._

 

* * *

 

 

A day could only last so long.

 

Dean refused to think about how many days made up an eternity.

Refused to think about how his eternity would be _this_ , one day after another, stretching on and on and on....

 

_Be over soon.  Be over soon._

 

Because if he thought of anything else, he would say “Yes”.

 


	2. DYER'S EVE

* * *

 

Dean had to admit: he _had_ been terrified.

 

At first, anyway.

The Hellhound had scared the living shit out of him.  He was sure he must have screamed himself raw as it shredded him with its claws, and there was no _way_ he could have held back when it crushed his shoulder in that putrid maw.

Then again, Dean knew better than most that pain can make you breathless, so maybe he hadn’t yelled _too_ much.

He hoped for Sammy’s sake that he hadn’t.

 

But when he found himself in that completely alien space of criss-crossing cables, enormous meat hooks impaling and immobilizing him, no other being, human or otherwise, to be seen or heard or felt or sensed --

He had panicked.

Screamed in a way that he would have been embarrassed to admit to topside.

Out of control.

Hysterical.

Weak.

So _not_ Winchester-worthy.

 

* * *

 

It was exhaustion that silenced him eventually, and he added a raw throat to his list of physical insults.

 

* * *

 

And then came hours or days or weeks or _years_ of….nothing.

 

Hanging there.

 _That_ pain, nothing more.

No sounds, no scents, nothing to taste.

Nothing to see except the cables and empty space that he had already studied and studied and _studied_ until his eyes ached and he thought his head would explode.

 

He tried to move, of course.  Rocked and pulled and jerked; grunted, swore, and raged.

 

It didn’t do anything, and he wondered what would have happened if it had.  There was no pull of gravity to detect while he was suspended, so if he had, by some ' _miracle_ ' -- mentally, he sneered at the word -- freed himself, would he have fallen, presumably all the way to Hell?  Risen, maybe to find himself topside?

Or would he have simply floated there, no longer impaled, but still, and now hopelessly, immobile?

 

* * *

 

 

He sang.  Every song he knew and  many he didn’t.  Made up words when he couldn’t remember the lyrics.  Invented songs when he grew bored with the ones he knew.

Laughed, the mania of it lost on him, when he imagined the look Sam would give him if he ever heard his big brother’s imitation of Miley Cyrus.

And then he’d cried, sobbed, _howled_ at the thought of never seeing his brother again.

 

* * *

 

 

He talked.  Told everyone he cared about all of the things he’d never said. Told Sam how much he loved him. How proud he was of his brother: his height, his strength, his intelligence, the way he stood up to their father.

Told Sam that he really meant it when he told the boy to give up hunting and make a life for himself.  To move on, forget Dean and really _live_.

He told Bobby how sorry he was if he’d ever let the older man down.  How much he loved him, thought of him as a father, admired him, appreciated all he’d ever done for both brothers.  Begged their surrogate father to help Sam find a life, and to find one of his own, too.  

Begged them both to keep on living.

Then it was his father he spoke to.  Pleaded with John to forgive him, because his dad had sacrificed himself for Dean, and Dean had thrown that away in order to save Sam.  But he thought his father would understand, _needed_ him to understand, because it was _Sam_ , and Dean had tried to let him go, tried to let his baby brother’s death stand, but he just couldn’t.  Because as bad as this was, hanging in this nothingness with a pain his mind no longer bothered to acknowledge, it was _nothing_ compared to the agony of trying to envision a world without his brother in it.

 

* * *

 

When the pain had been a constant for so long that his brain had turned a deaf ear to it;

when he could no longer tell whether his voice was projecting or was only in his head;

when he was seconds away from madness --

they came for him.

 

He cried with relief when he saw their demonic faces, thanked them over and over between  agonized screams as they slashed at his flesh, tearing the hooks from his body, freeing him from his bonds.

 _This_ pain was _new_ , their faces were _new_ , there was something _new_ invading that soul-crushing _sameness_ , and he wept with joy, heedless of the monsters’ pity and disgust.

 

Then came Alastair, and the level of horror was also new.

 


	3. EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

In the long, insanity-inducing hours that Dean had spent hanging from meat hooks right after being shredded by a Hellhound, he’d spent a lot of time thinking.  With his playfulness, his often juvenile sense of humor, and his “act first, ask questions later” approach to life, one would be tempted to assume that thinking wasn’t something that Dean Winchester was accustomed to.  Or particularly _good_ at.

 

One would be wrong.

 

He had explored some lines of reasoning and developed strategies for his time on the rack that turned out to be very useful to him -- and, more importantly, exquisitely frustrating for Alastair.

 

The first was something his father had taught him at a very young age, and Dean had pulled the memory out, turning it over, exploring it.  _Savoring_ it.

 

* * *

 

It was his first somewhat serious injury.

Seven or maybe eight years old, out hunting a poltergeist with his father.  He had zigged when he should have zagged, and took a flying coffee cup to the temple.  He felt the blow, and the next thing he knew, his father was cradling him against his chest.

The look on John’s face was one of sheer terror. 

Dean’s head hurt and he could taste blood, but it was the thought that something had frightened his father that drove the boy to begin wailing.

“Sh-sh-sh,” John had sussed, bouncing his son gently in his lap.  “It’s just a little cut.  You’re going to be fine.  Shhhhhhh.”

He had bundled Dean into the car, gone back to take care of the poltergeist, then rushed them both to Bobby’s house.

Along the way he had explained something to Dean, imparted facts that had made such an impact on the achingly young hunter that they had dictated his mindset from that day forward.

“Pain,” the Winchester patriarch had explained to his wide-eyed son, “is how your body knows that something is wrong.”  He patted the dashboard.  “Your body is like a car, right?”  Dean nodded solemnly.  “It’s a machine, and it needs to run right. Your mind, that’s you.  That’s who you are, and you are in charge of taking care of your machine.  Now, a car can’t tell you, ‘hey, that pothole cracked my axle a little.  Let’s get that fixed.’  But if you twist your ankle, your body can make your brain understand that something is wrong, and it trusts your brain to get it fixed.”

Dean blinked as images of a cartoon version of  himself ran around in his head, wearing mechanics overalls and clutching a socket wrench, tightening bolts all over his body.

John saw the look of comprehension, and went on: “Fear is another way the body has of making sure it stays safe, and they go together.  When your body gets injured, it tells your brain, ‘I’m hurt!’ and ‘We need to get away!’.  That’s how your body makes sure that whatever injured it doesn’t get to keep on doing that.  Make sense?”

Dean nodded, wide eyes and relaxed mouth showing how seriously he was taking his father’s lecture.

“Now, sometimes there are things that hurt but are helping your body.  Getting a vaccine from the doctor is one.  Getting a wound cleaned out and stitched up is another.  It hurts, and you might feel scared, but you know what?  Your brain can decide whether to be afraid or not.  And if you know that the hurt is helping, not breaking your machine, you can make the fear go away.”

This was a pretty intense concept, and John paused to make sure that Dean was still following.

“Is that why you don’t cry and yell when Uncle Bobby stitches up your owies, Dad?”

John’s dimples made a rare appearance as he beamed at his son.  “That is exactly it, Dean.  It doesn’t  hurt nearly as much when you aren’t scared.  And crying or screaming?  That’s the same thing: trying to get help so your body doesn’t get messed up any more.  Sometimes crying or screaming helps, especially if you need someone to come and get you or fix you up.  But if someone is already doing that, then will crying about it do any good?”

Dean shook his head.  “No, Sir.”

John reached over to ruffle his son’s hair carefully.  “You are such  a smart little man, Dean.”

And when they got to Bobby’s and his dad cleaned out the cut on his scalp and then put stitches in it, Dean sat, tense and unmoving, and he did not make a sound.

“I’ve seen grown men who couldn’t sit through that so well,” Bobby remarked.

John smiled down at his son.  “He’s not just any man.  He’s a Winchester.  Right, Dean?”

 

It remained one of the proudest moments of Dean’s life.

 

* * *

 

The other thought that Dean had examined in each minute detail was that he really had no body.  The hooks that felt like they were impaling him: they were actually in an artificial vessel.  In fact, more than likely they didn’t exist at _all_ , and everything was just one giant mind-fuck.  Hallucinations.  Because what Dean had traded was his _soul_ , and he knew without a doubt that his body had been left topside.

Was charcoal and ashes by now, courtesy of the hunter’s funeral that he knew he had earned.

So pain and fear were made to keep the body safe, but he had no body.  That meant there was nothing to be afraid of.  The denizens of Hell could manufacture pain that he would be forced to experience, but he didn’t have to worry or care about it, because pain alone could not damage his soul.

 

Fear could.  

 

So could isolation.

 

And Dean realized, as he followed those threads of thought, that what he needed to do down here in Hell was protect his soul.  He needed to stay _human_ , not allow them to break him and turn him demonic.  They could have his figmental body, but not his _soul._

 

In the stifling monotony Dean began to compile a list of things that made him...well, so _Dean_.

 

     Sarcasm and snark.

     His sense of humor, even though Sam thought it was stupid.

     His love of music, especially rock music.

     His love of cars.

     Being able to ignore pain.

     Hating monsters and demons and sadists.

     Loving women and pie and...well, just food in general.  But not Sam’s rabbit food.

     Saving people. Hunting things.

     And Sammy.  Being willing to do _anything_ for Sammy.

 

These things and more were what he needed to protect, and he drew them in, curled around them, locked them away, so when he found himself on the rack, facing Alastair’s blades and fire, he was ready.

 

Unfortunately, so was Alastair.

 


	4. SAD BUT TRUE

* * *

 

"Dean Winchester." The syllables were drawn out until they were almost purred.

Dean scrutinized the man before him.  _Doesn't look very scary_ , he thought. Tall, gaunt, pale, with thinning hair and grey peppering his beard.  _Why did he take_ this  _form, though? There must be a reason._ Dean remained wary.

"Oh, I'm sorry, how rude of me." The demon smiled, an expression that contrasted starkly with the venom in his eyes. "The name's Alastair. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Dean quirked a half grin. "I'd shake your hand, but," he turned his head to look meaningfully at his right wrist, and the smirk spread in anticipation of the lame cliche he was about to deliver, "I'm kinda tied up right now."

Alastair rewarded him with a chuckle. "Oh, Dean," and he raised a long, slender finger, waggling it playfully. "I've heard about you. You do not disappoint."

"That's what _all_ the girls say, Allie." Dean winked at him.

Before that slight motion of his eyelid ended, Alastair was before him, holding up a bloodied scalpel blade. He ran his tongue along it, cleaning the metal, savoring the unique sapidity of the famous Dean Winchester.

"What the hell?" Dean glanced down, and the thin line of cold that had captured his attention quickly became a sharp burn as he took in the bone deep laceration running down his left side. He smirked back at Alastair. "Well, you're quick. I'll give you that."

"Oh, but so very thorough," was the demon's response, and he placed another incision parallel to the first.

"Death by a thousand cuts, eh?"  _So this is Hell. I expected it to be much worse. This I can handle._  "Those Geneva Convention folks would  _not_  be amused. And hey," he motioned with his head, "come close. I need to tell you a secret."

Tilting his head, wary but curious, Alastair sidled one step closer, leaning in with an ear turned toward his captive.

"I'm already dead," and Dean lunged forward, teeth closing around the base of the demon's ear, tearing flesh from bone with a vicious wrenching motion of his head. He grinned around his bloody prize before spitting it out to bounce off of Mr. Supreme Tormentor's chest.

Alastair turned to look at him, admiring the smear of blood across the former hunter's lips. "Dean, Dean, Dean."  He shook his head sadly, finger waving a censure. "While I do admire your spunk, you have to know that what you just did moved you right to the top of my naughty list."

A belt appeared in his hand, identical to the one that John Winchester had worn.

Dean licked his lips, and Alastair smiled in satisfaction as he watched the young man swallow. Hard.

He began wrapping the tongue of leather around his fist, allowing the buckle to swing free. "Do you remember the first time you discovered what happens to naughty boys, Dean?"

 _Shit fucking hell._  What had initially seemed almost laughable had suddenly become terrifying as Dean realized that it was no longer his adult self strapped to the metal frame.

The body he inhabited was small, the fragile chest bird-like, and he knew that if he could see his own face, it would be dominated by a pair of luminous and tremulously fear-filled eyes.

This body had no defense against pain, and Dean felt his heart breaking for the boy he had been the first time he lived through this particular torment.

 _I'm sorry, little guy._  He spoke to his own young self, realization dawning for the first time.  _You didn't deserve it then, and you don't deserve it now.  I'm sorry._

 

Although Dean had adopted his best poker face, the tight jaw, tension throughout his body, and fine sheen of sweat between his shoulder blades gave him away.

 

Alastair shifted his erection.

 

When first blow fell, Dean closed his eyes. His breath betrayed him with a whimper on the second, so he held it in for the third strike.  _I will not reward this asshole by letting him know how much he's hurting me._

But it wasn't just Dean's body that had regressed; part of his soul had, as well. By the fourth blow the child inside him was already begging for the punishment to end, and Dean could feel the damning tears cooling his cheeks.

_Hang in there, little guy. It's gonna be okay._

But innocence cannot comprehend brutality, and the timorous confusion broke through, leaving the child sobbing despite Dean's best efforts at maintaining control.

_You're doing great, buddy. It's alright to cry. Just don't say 'sorry', because you didn't do anything wrong, okay? Don't apologize, and don't beg._

 

But this was Hell, and a belt was not merely a bit of leather and metal in Hell. Or at least there was no reason for it to remain so.

 

Alastair tried decorating the buckle with ice, then a series of minuscule blades.

 

It wasn't until he turned the metal to the temperature of a branding iron that Dean - the adult as well as the child- began to scream.

 

* * *

 

The flesh had been flayed from Dean's piteously juvenile frame before Alastair paused to give his breathless victim a chance to speak.

Dean's head was hanging, saliva stained with bile dripping sluggishly from his lower lip.

Alastair gripped the boy's hair, jerking his head back.

Hazy eyes now devoid of their innocence gazed back at him.

"Do you have something to say to me, Dean?" He stroked his toy's face almost lovingly with the edge of the folded belt.

He watched the child struggle to focus, tip of his tongue flicking out weakly to touch his soiled lip.

"Yeah." His high-pitched, scream-roughened voice was almost too quiet to hear, and Alastair turned his good ear toward the boy.

 

"It.

Was.

 _Worth it._ "

 

The demon's head snapped around, mouth widened in surprise, and Dean spit in his face.

 

Alastair burst out laughing, mirth glinting in his eyes.

"Oh, I  _like_  you, Dean Winchester!" He clapped his hands together, nearly dancing with glee. "This is going to be so much  _fun_!"

 

* * *

His first day in Hell, Dean learned that even after having all of the flesh removed from your body by a demonically-enhanced belt, there was no escape into loss of consciousness in that realm.


	5. ENTER SANDMAN

* * *

 

 

Each day began with the same question:  “What’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”  As if Alastair were a barista, Dean a regular customer dropping by on his way to some white-collar job.

The first time Alastair had asked, the hunter’s reply had been standard Dean Winchester: “Fuck you, Alastair.”

In the blink of an eye, the rack had become a table with Dean bent over it and strapped down tightly.

 

Dean was instantly frantic --

 

_hands circle Dean’s ankles like talons and they pull and he fights_

_and something tears in his leg and he panics_

_and there is weight on his thighs and he struggles and the men hold tighter_

_and he feels the pressure against his ass and he knows what’s coming_

_and he’s not ready, he doesn’t want this, and his mind screams and he panics_

_and the man above him pulls harder on the bridle of Dean’s gag,_

_using it for leverage while he thrusts forward viciously_

 

\-- screaming in rage tinged with hysteria before anyone had even touched him, thrashing hard enough to lacerate his wrists and ankles, risking serious injury to himself in his terror and desperation.

 

Alastair stood back, fascinated.

 

Eventually the hunter wore himself out.

He sagged limply, skin slick with sweat and blood, chest heaving.  

Alastair squatted down, face level with that of his favorite toy, and only then could the piteous begging be heard.  

“Please please please.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  Not this.  Don’t do this.  Please.”

The boy’s face was contorted, red, glistening with tears and snot.

“Dean, Dean.  I knew that whole gang-rape thing messed with your mind a little, but this reaction is a tad extreme, don’t you think?”

“Please.  I’m sorry.  Just lemme go, please.”

“What are you sorry for, Dean?”

“I left Sammy.  I shouldn’a left Sammy.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.”

“Sam isn’t here, Dean.  You’re in Hell, remember?”  He touched his forefinger to the young man’s head, and Dean’s eyes snapped open, wide and aware, flashback receding.

“Jesus Christ!”

Alastair chuckled.  “Has left the building.”

Ignoring him, Dean lifted his head, turning it with difficulty, tugging halfheartedly at his restraints.  “Alastair, please….”

The demon smiled, eyes black.  “‘Please’ what, my dear boy?  You asked me to fuck you.”  He carded his fingers through the young man’s hair, and Dean shuddered, a look of horror shading his countenance.  “Well, what you actually said was ‘fuck you, Alastair,’ which I believe implies that you wanted to top.  But --” he drew the word out in a sing-song “--given the current situation, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“I’m sorry, Alastair.  I’m sorry I was a smart-ass.”  Even as he spoke, Dean struggled to remain silent, knowing that he was exposing his weakness, guaranteeing that _this_ , his worst nightmare, would fill the entire day.  And probably every one after that, until he found a way to make it not matter anymore.

Not shred his soul.

Alastair continued to smile, fingers traveling down the nape of Dean’s neck, between his shoulder blades, tracking languorously down his spine.  

“It’s going to happen, Dean.  This is Hell; sex is a given, and sex combined with both pain and humiliation...well, that epitomizes the term ‘hell’, don’t you think?”

Dean closed his eyes, swallowing back tears.  “Please, not today.  I - I’m not ready.  Something else, okay?  You can use the belt again, or set the Hellhounds on me, or burn me.  Just please, _please_ , not this.”

His voice was tight, the panic clear.

_It doesn't matter. Protect your soul._

But he couldn't.

Alastair straightened, licking his lips as his eyes roamed over the man spread out before him, naked and deliciously unwilling.  His fingernails scraped teasingly along the curve of one muscular buttock, and Dean shuddered.  Alastair closed his eyes, flattening his palm along that supple flesh, the better to enjoy his victim’s reaction.  “Mm, mm, mm.  That is so nice.”

Dean’s body was rigid, tears flowing freely.

“Do you know how long I’ve been dreaming of this, Dean?”  Keeping his hand in place, he moved until he was standing between the boy’s spread thighs.  “Since before I arranged for those men to meet you in that bar.”  He dropped his hands to Dean’s ankles and began to slide them up, appreciating the shape of the hunter’s toned body.

“W-what?”  Dean’s eyes were open, and he craned his neck in a hopeless bid to read his tormentor’s expression.

“Oh, yes, Dean.”  Alastair ran his palms up and down Dean’s calves, humming his pleasure.  “Hell has had plans for you for quite a while, boy.  That night -- your gang rape -- that was my first task.”  His hands traveled higher, and Dean tensed, feeling the demon’s thumbs caress the tender skin on the insides of his thighs.  “Wanted me to soften you up.  Make you weak.  Easier to kill.”  Higher still, and he alternated between stroking and kneading the globes of his toy’s ass, feeling his own lust build.  “I didn’t even need to possess them all. Just the ring-leader.  Ryan, I think his name was.  I took him, and he found the others.”  Alastair’s clothes disappeared, his erection monstrously large and straining.  “Then it was just a matter of getting you into the right place at the right time.”  He licked his lips, lining up, readying himself.  “So, as you can see, I’ve been anticipating this moment for years, Dean, and I just don’t think I can hold off any longer.”

Dean’s frantic “Wait!”  was followed by an agonized scream as Alastair thrust into him viciously.

The hunter’s cry was cut off abruptly as the improbable organ that Alastair had conjured buried itself in Dean’s body with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs.

Alastair alternated between thrusts so powerful they crushed organs and withdrawing so slowly that tissue shredded along the way.

 

* * *

 

 

That day Dean discovered that even having half of his lungs pulverized, the rest filled with his own aspirated vomit, he could still scream,

and that no porn star in the world could out-last Alastair when it came to holding back for the perfect money shot.

 

 

It was his worst day in Hell thus far.

He refused to think about how many more there were to come.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Each day ended with the same question:  “Are you willing to take up my blade in order to save yourself from the rack?”

 

This day Alastair directed the question to the back of Dean’s head, holding himself balls-deep in the boy’s somehow still virgin-tight ass.

And when he heard the exhausted, pain-filled, and nearly unintelligible “No”, Alastair allowed himself to attain his release, shuddering in ecstasy as the liquid fire of his ejaculate immolated his young victim from the inside out.

 


	6. THE STRUGGLE WITHIN

* * *

 

 _I’m not gonna scream today._  

Dean had found that it helped to have goals.

_No matter what that bastard does: I don’t have a body, they’re just making it hurt somehow even without one.  The asshole wants me to scream, which means I'm gonna make damned sure he doesn't hear so much as a fuckin' whimper._

“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”  The demon thought his daily question was clever.

“Oh, hey.  I’d like a double cheeseburger, extra onions, and a side of fries.  Wait: can I get slice of apple pie, too?  Thanks.”

Alastair chuckled.  He set the box he was carrying down on a table that had materialized from out of nowhere.  “You know, Dean,” and the lisp was as prominent as always, “I’m not lying when I say that I like you.  Even your father lost his charm eventually.  Somehow, I think you'll stay fresh longer.”

Dean’s smile faltered, but not for long.  “Dad’s in Heaven now, asshole.  You can talk about him all you want.  It don’t matter anymore.”  He leaned forward, eyes hard despite his smirk.  “ _He won_.”

Alastair shrugged, nonplussed.  “I had my fun with him."  He moved languidly  around his captive, pausing behind him to caress the curve of Dean’s ass, knowing how much the young man hated it.  "Learned a lot, too.”  

He felt his toy flinch in reaction, and he smiled.

He slid his arms around the hunter, pressing his cheek to Dean’s ear, running his fingers over the boy’s torso as if he were cuddling a lover.  “Would you like to see something that never failed to get a response from your father, Dean?”

“Was it gutting you with a demon blade?  Because I’d love to see that.”

A straight razor appeared in Alastair’s hands, pressed against the center of Dean’s abdomen.  “You’re close!”

The pressure increased, and Dean closed his eyes, feeling the line of ice that became fire an instant later, skin parting, metal biting deeper, muscles in his abdomen separating.

“Open your eyes, Dean.” The demon had adopted a commanding tone, mirth dissipating.

Dean obeyed, gaze locked on the wall before him, refusing to look down at the damage that had undoubtedly been done.

_No body.  ‘S not real._

Then Alastair was directly in front of him, their faces nearly touching as he pushed long fingers into the incision.

First nails, then digits explored the rent in Dean's flesh, burning sharply as they worked their way into him.

_Can’t hurt.  You don’t have a body.  Can’t hurt._

Dean continued to stare right through his tormentor.

Alastair canted his head to one side, tip of his tongue appearing at the corner of his mouth, wriggling his fingers to work them in deeper.

Dean held his breath, body rigid.

_Can’t hurt.  Can’t hurt._

Brow furrowed in concentration, Alastair added his thumb to the four fingers already working to stretch and expand the laceration penetrating his victim’s abdomen.

_Don't scream. 'S not real._

His fist popped through, buried to the wrist in hot, living flesh.

A small involuntary cry escaped the boy on an exhale.

_Be over soon.  Be over soon._

The demon braced his hand on the hunter’s shoulder, then jerked his arm out quickly, bringing a loop of intestine with him.

Dean vomited explosively, coating both of them in blood and bile.  

Leaving the pink twist of living rope to contract and writhe, Alastair crossed to the table, wiping Dean’s vomit from his face.

Dean shuddered continuously.

Tears coursed down his face in an uninterrupted stream.

_Be over soon.  Be over soon._

Alastair lifted the box, returning to his captive’s side.  

“I brought you a present.”

He set the box on the floor between Dean’s spread ankles.  

He removed the lid.

The haunting scritch of small, sharp nails on cardboard heralded the appearance of a twitching black nose ringed by long whiskers.

Alastair draped the displaced portion of Dean's bowel inside the container.

A rat investigated, nipping at the glistening tissue.

_Not real can’t hurt no body won’t last_

It began climbing the rope of intestines, a verminous prince to Dean's eviscerated Rapunzel, forcing its way into the convulsing heat of the young man's abdominal cavity.

Another rodent followed.

 

Dean screamed.

 

* * *

 

By the end of the day, there was little left of him.

The flesh had been gnawed from his fingers and toes.

His lips and eyelids had been nibbled away.

The gluttonous rodents had filled their bellies with the contents of the man's abdomen and chest, leaving his torso hollow and their own on the verge of bursting.

 

Dean had screamed himself raw.

Again.

 

_Be over soon._

 

* * *

 

 

Alastair stood before him, the rats suddenly gone.

“Are you ready to take up my blade, Dean?  Ready to end this unnecessary pain?  To escape this rack?”

The sound that emerged was equivalent in strength and beauty to that of a corpse being dragged across gravel.

 

“No.”


	7. RIDE THE LIGHTNING

* * *

 

“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”

“Seriously?  I haven’t even had a chance to look at a menu yet!  I gotta tell ya, the service in this place _sucks_.”

Alastair chuckled. “I’ll be sure to take it up with the management.”

The demon’s morning inspection of his subject had begun, and Dean ground his teeth, gaze stubbornly fixed on a spot directly in front of him as Alastair's hungry eyes licked over ever millimeter of the hunter’s exposed flesh.

_Quit letting him fuck with your head, Dean.  Your soul is the new Sammy.  Keep it safe._

Hell’s Grand Torturer completed his circuit, coming to rest directly in front of his favorite boy toy.  He tilted his head, skeletal forefinger resting on his lower lip.  “Do I remember right?  Were you once electrocuted?”

 _Oh, shit._  The horror of his near-death experience with the Rawhead washed over him, but Dean’s face remained implacable.

“Didn’t you, in fact, actually _fry_ your _heart_ with your own taser?”  

Alastair’s amused condescension broke through Dean’s facade, and the young man flicked a glance at  his captor.  “Saved the kids, though, didn’t I?  Asshole.”

The demon reached out, a soft smile warming his features, and began to stroke Dean’s naked chest.  “You had us worried with that one, Dean-o.  So close to dying, and you were happy about it." He toyed at an erect nipple.  "You would have gone to Heaven, and we couldn't have that." His fingers glided lower, teasing into the trail of soft hair leading away from the man's navel.  "Thank goodness little Sammy came along with a plan to save you.”

Dean’s face burned, both in shame that his self-hatred had been so evident to the denizens of Hell, and at the helpless fury instigated by his tormentor's unwelcome intimacy.

“That rape?" Alastair's tone was inquisitive, as if he expected Dean to have forgotten, or need clarification.  "The gang rape that I orchestrated so beautifully, and, by the way, consider one of my proudest moments?”  His hand dropped, following the tantalizing ‘V’ of Dean’s well-developed abdominal muscles all the way to its apex.

The demon’s palm was surprisingly warm and soft as it cradled the hunter’s genitalia, and Dean was pleased to note that his body’s only response was his scrotum tightening as his testicles sought an escape from the alien touch.

Not that Alastair minded.  Consensual or not, he would take what he wanted.  It was all the same to him.

“That was supposed to drive you to suicide, Dean."  He sighed dramatically.  "I came _so_ close to succeeding.”  He began to knead the flesh he held, a gentle press and pull that Dean had to admit would have felt pretty damned good in any other situation.

In that time, in that place, with that being, all it did was make him nauseous.

“Victims of suicide come to us.  Did you know that, Dean?”

The question was wasted on the distracted hunter.  Dean refused to look down, because what had started as a hand was now a hot, velvety wetness, sucking and petting him, and he wanted to feel disgust, with every fragment of his tormented soul he _longed_ to feel disgust, and if he looked down and Alastair had conjured a woman, Dean was certain that he’d lose this fight, and he didn’t know why Alastair wanted that, but just knowing he did was enough for Dean to want to deny him --

“Those _sad_ , _lonely_ , lost and hopeless souls come to _us_.  Doesn’t seem fair, really.”

 

Dean had closed his eyes tightly, focusing on the sibilant drawl of Alastair’s nauseating voice, struggling to ignore the growing heat in his loins, the first pleasure he’d felt in what was probably years.

 

 _No.  This isn’t_ right _._

 

“Already so tortured, you know?”  The demon watched his subject’s face closely as he fondled the man, noting the tension, the hitched breaths, the sweat on his brow.  “And then I am tasked with hurting them even more.”  He shook his head in mock sorrow.

 

Dean’s cock was like iron in Alastair’s fist.  What could only have been a tongue slid around the engorged crown, even as a second fantom mouth surrounded him, muscles stroking his shaft with each swallow.

 

_it shouldn’t feel so good,_

_he can’t remember why but it shouldn’t_

 

Alastair leaned close, breath fanning the conflicted hunter’s ear.  “I would much rather give them pleasure.”  The drawl had been replaced by a low, seductive purr.

 

_he feels the build and he knows it’s coming_

_and it shouldn’t_

_and it is_

_and he can’t_

_and it’s wrong_

 

A third mouth drew both testicles into its delicious heat while the first scraped the ridge of his head with gentle teeth, tongue dipping into his slit.  The second worked rapidly, sliding up and down his shaft even as the fictional throat squeezed him convulsively.

Dean's breath locked and his muscles strained with the strength of his denial.

But the body is a machine.  Pleasure is pleasure, and this vessel had been craving remembered ecstasy for a very long time.

 

His anguished “No!” was lost in the bliss that exploded through him, whiting out his vision.

 

* * *

 

 

The excruciating pleasure drained away, and Dean found himself hanging limply from his restraints, face wet with tears.

Without raising his head and through the veil of eyelashes clotted with the evidence of his self-loathing, Dean could just make out the shape of Alastair’s shoes.

“I hate you.”  

Alastair chuckled.  “That’s the point, my fine young hunter.”  

 

Something moved into his line of site, and Dean recognized the shape of a cattle prod as the twin metal prongs came to rest coldly against his lower abdomen.

“Hell is a place for sinners to come and, well, _sin_.  Have you ever thought of that, Dean?”

The demon must have pressed a button, because Dean’s entire body went rigid, teeth locked on a scream as white-hot comets of agony shot through him, fire trailing behind each one as if a Roman Candle had been detonated in his groin.

 

The sensation ended as abruptly as it had begun, and the hunter sagged bonelessly against the rack.

 

“There are very few rules here, you see.  All of the those urges that you try so hard to fight topside? They are _virtues_ here, Dean.  They are applauded, _celebrated_ , even.”

 

The explosive misery contorted him again, whiting out his brain with the same intensity that his orgasm had, sparing him the humiliation of hearing his own scream.

 

Alastair moved in close, cattle prod temporarily abandoned, and pressed his nude body to the long, lean form of the succulent young hunter.  He lifted Dean’s chin with one elegant finger, stroking the silky flesh of the boy’s flank with his other hand.  “Sadism is sin, Dean, but so is lust.”  He pressed his erection into the yielding heat of his toy’s temporarily flaccid member.  “I can bring you pleasure, or I can manufacture so much pain.”  He licked the young man’s lips, savoring the briny flavor of the boy’s tears.  “Which will it be, Dean?”

 

“Pain,” the hunter snarled, and he snapped his head forward, the thick helmet of his skull shattering the bridge of his tormentor’s nose.

 

The demon staggered back, now fully clothed, laughing through the blood streaming down his face.  In the air around him various implements hung, of which Dean recognized a small handful:  taser, cattle prod, car battery with leads, portable defibrillator.

“As you wish, my dear boy.”

 

* * *

 

 

That day Dean learned that if electrical current is applied in just the right way, a person’s muscles can contract with enough force to separate joints.  

     Tear tendons and ligaments.

     Break bones.

All without, unfortunately, stopping the heart.

 

He also learned that the burns a conductive device leaves on the skin are much less agonizing than those left on the lining of the rectum, the underside of the tongue, the crystalline window of an eyeball.

 

The final lesson of that never-ending day was that, in the hands of a skilled professional, destruction of a simulated human vessel by electrical stimulation can take a very, _very_ long time.

 


	8. TRAPPED  UNDER ICE

* * *

 

“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”

“I could really go for some pizza.  One of those deep, Chicago-style ones.  With sausage and pepperoni, and garlic butter brushed on the crust.”

 

Dean’s stomach contracted painfully as the object he had described appeared, balanced on Alastair’s palm.

“Like this?”

Dean swallowed the saliva that flooded his mouth. _Can’t remember the last time I tasted food._

A table appeared, covered in a white cloth, taper candle centered and flickering invitingly.  Alastair set the pie on it gently, then snapped his fingers, nodding in satisfaction at the frosted mug of beer that appeared, condensation beading on the glass.

_I get it: today I get to drown in my own drool.  That’ll be fun._

 

And more somberly: _Guard your soul, Dean._

 

Alastair leaned against the wall, his face now blocking the spot that Dean habitually focused on when he was trying to will himself to ignore whatever torment the demon had chosen to inflict on him that day.

“It’s all yours, Dean.  All you have to do is go get it.”

 

* * *

 

Without warning Dean found himself kneeling on the stone floor, staring down a long corridor that ended with the table, _his_ table, shining like a beacon.

He stood, stomach complaining loudly at the years of neglect, and stared down the long, innocuous-appearing hall.

Not even a flicker of a glance gave him away as he launched himself sideways, driving his shoulder into the creature that he had been dreaming of ripping apart with his bare hands for what Dean was sure was at least months, if not years.

 

It was hard to keep track of time down here.

 

He felt his shoulder drive into a bony chest, heard the wind huff out of his surprised opponent, was reaching for the demon's throat, his hands curled into talons --

 

The throaty growl, stench of sulfur and wet dog, and sensation of something piercing his skin even as it crushed his skull all assaulted Dean simultaneously.

 

* * *

 

And he was strapped to the rack, whole once more.

“Would you like to try that again?”  Alastair was smiling.

 

_Son of a bitch.  I did exactly what he wanted me to._

 

Yet, finding himself once again on his knees on the hard, cold, floor, corridor stretching out impossibly away from him, he could not resist the temptation to try for Alastair's throat again.

 

And then a third time.

 

By the fourth he thought he may as well make an effort to reach the table.  He knew he’d never get there -- this was Hell, after all, and even if he did, the pizza would undoubtedly kill him in some horrible, nightmare-inducing way.  Poison that made his skin blister and peel off in gelatinous chunks, or each sausage he swallowed would turn into some living thing and eat him from the inside out. 

But maybe, if he paid attention, he could figure out a way to get a weapon.

Find a chink in Hell’s armor.

And even if he didn’t, the effort would be food for his soul.  A reminder of who Dean Winchester truly was. 

 

What he stood for.

 

He figured the first time down the guantlet was a give-away, just to see what would happen.  He came up off the floor in a sprint, making it a good fifty feet before flames shot out from the walls like a row of gigantic blow-torches.

He smiled as he was immolated, pleased with himself for catching whoever was in charge of the 'Incinerate Dean' button off-guard.

 

* * *

 

 

The second time he approached one wall, examining it with care, eyes probing even as his fingertips read the abrasive stone surface.

That left his back exposed, unprotected, to the opposite wall.

He never saw the shining mass of blades that diced him neatly into bite-sized cubes.

 

* * *

 

 

The third time he stood, weighing his options.  

 

_I’m gonna die in some insane way no matter what.  Not gonna crawl; too humiliating.  Already tried running.  Might be worth another go, just to see how far I can get.  Or I could try the ol’ Winchester swagger._

 

Although he figured he scored points for style and bravado, the Winchester Swagger method proved to be the most excruciating death thus far: venomous snakes abruptly covered the floor, forcing Dean to either give up and retreat or continue despite being bitten.

The fangs themselves were bad enough, but the toxins simultaneously sent electric jolts of pain zinging along his nerve endings while melting his tissues into a black goo.

He went from walking to crawling as his feet and shins dissolved, then to pulling himself by his arms when his thighs similarly disintegrated.

He had made it three quarters of the way to his prize by the time his upper body and face melted.

 

* * *

 

 

The fourth time he stood gazing at the walls, thinking about how twisted reality was in this realm.  

“I wonder…”

He took off at a dead run right at one expanse of vertical stone, raced halfway up it, and launched himself into the air, completing a beautifully executed backflip to land, feet wide, knees bent, in a perfect superhero pose.  “Holy shit!  Did you _see_ that?”

The irritated shake of Alastair’s head was all the reward Dean needed, and he laughed as the section of rock he posed beneath dropped, crushing him into Dean pudding.

 

* * *

 

 

“Did you see that, Allie?  Did you see my sweet back flip?”

Not only was his body restored each time, but he retained the memories of his prior experiences as if the death had never occurred.

Except that he remembered it, of course.  The pain and frustration and horror and relief and hopelessness of it.

 

He managed to get away with two more video game moments before Alastair changed the rules, coating the walls with ice.

“Spoil sport.”  Dean crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to move now that his game had been ruined.

He remained in that position, lip thrust forward in a stubborn pout, watching as the yeti stalked towards him.

Until, that is, the beast was within a few feet of him.  Then Dean went for a running high jump directly over the beast, inverting his body in mid-air to avoid the grasping arms of the slavering beast.

He was as stunned as the monster undoubtedly was when he found himself standing unharmed in the center of the corridor, beyond the yeti's reach and halfway to his goal.

Dean turned and sprinted, feeling ice form on his spine in the wake of the monstrous snowman’s indignant bellow.

 

HIs fingers were literally touching the table cloth when the second roar came, and the supernatural creature’s expelled breath engulfed Dean in a block of ice.

The table, the pizza, and -- _dammit_  -- the beer disappeared to be replaced by Alastair’s jeering countenance.

 

 _Asshole_.

 

The ice burned against Dean’s bare skin. His face was free, though his skull was not.  Unable to move his jaw, Dean spoke through clenched teeth: “Think I got frostbite on my dick.”  

Alastair’s smile was as lascivious as always.  “This doesn’t have to _be_ , you know.”  Dean’s three favorite _Busty Asian Beauties_ centerfolds appeared, scantily clad and simpering.  “Hell can be a _happy_ place, Dean.”  A table filled with all of  his favorite foods came next, with the women holding items up to him, almost close enough to taste, before feeding them to one another.  “It’s a place to indulge _all_ of your appetites.  No judgments.  No _consequences_.”  A full bar appeared, taps gleaming, bottle after bottle of expensive liquor lining a mirrored wall.  The ladies poured drinks, spilling them down their chests, giggling as they lapped the sticky fluid from one another’s skin, eyes on Dean the entire time.  “Every pleasure you’ve ever dreamt of, Dean, every day for the rest of eternity.  

"All you have to do is say ‘yes’.”

 

The cold that burned Dean's skin also made his bones ache.  His teeth would have chattered if there had been any motion possible in his jaw.

 

Alastair stepped closer.  “I can take you out of that iceberg right now, Dean.  Conjure a warm, soft bed.  Let those delicious young ladies use their hot bodies to drive the chill from your bones.  They would do whatever you wanted, give themselves to you _over_ and _over_ until you forgot that such a thing as 'cold' ever existed.”

 

What hurt the most was his head.  He’d never felt pain like that before, like something was crushing his skull, grinding the bones together, at the same time that he had the worst ice cream headache of his life.

 

“Or you can continue to punish yourself, Dean.  Continue to deny yourself the rewards you clearly deserve, just as you did Topside.”

The demon snapped his fingers, and the buffet was crawling with maggots.

The bar became the honky tonk that a roofied Dean had been hauled from.  Jeff and his buddies replaced the Asian beauties, staring at him like a pack of ravenous lions, waiting for another turn at his ass.

And the ice started to compress, forcing a reluctant cry from gritted teeth as his bones fractured under the weight.

 

“‘Yes’ brings you unending pleasure.  ‘No’ has you weeping and wailing each and every day for all of eternity.”  

 

Mary appeared on the ceiling behind Alastair, eyes horror-stricken, dripping blood even as she burned.

 

“Will you take up my razor?”

 

Every one of Dean's ribs snapped like a chorus of frost-laden branches in a Wisconsin forest.

The exhale that particular agony forced from him carried Dean’s unequivocal reply:  

 

“No.”

  
  



	9. THE UNFORGIVEN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by "In Shadow" by UnholyMuse (NongPradu here) on FanFiction.com (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5057112/1/In-Shadow), a story that literally had me crying. 
> 
> Warning: rape of a minor.

* * *

 

"So, what'll it be today, Mr. Winchester?"

 

Dean was heartily sick of it all:

.....The rough stone walls, smelling of mildew and glistening with damp;

.....The sconces holding flickering candles that Alastair insisted were made from human fat;

.....The distant screams and moans, interlaced with cheers and hysterical laughter;

.....The bitter synesthesia of his own sweat and fear.

 

"How about your _fucking_ head on a _fucking_ platter, you sadistic son of a bitch?"

Alastair chuckled. "Sounds like _some_ one woke up on the wrong side of the bed!"

Dean barely remembered to choke off the instinctive "Fuck you" that teased at his lips, remembering what had happened the last time he'd said that.

He'd suffered a lot of 'bad' during his tenure in Hell, but getting ass-raped by this clammy-skinned demon still ranked high on his list of experiences to avoid repeating.

 

"Maybe if I actually got to wake up _in_ a bed for once, I'd be a little more pleasant."

 

Alastair's smile was the indulgent response of a doting parent.   "Oh, my sweet, sweet boy!  All you had to do was ask!"

He snapped his fingers.

 

* * *

 

The cheap sheets abraded his skin as his naked body shifted on the worn mattress.

Dean blinked, fighting his way to cognizance past an unfamiliar sense of heaviness that suffused both his body and his mind, like being submerged in wet concrete.

Large hands rolled him onto his back, turning his head -

 

And his heart skipped into overdrive, eyes suddenly wide and panicked, his visual field overwhelmed with a dirty, stubble-flecked face just inches from his own.

Colorless lips split to reveal blackened teeth. The necrotic odor made Dean gag.

"Hey, boy. 'Bout time you woke up."

A wide thumb reached out, and Dean's eyes crossed as he attempted to follow the grime-encrusted digit as it neared his face.

The man caressed the boy's lower lip, smile deepening as his pupils blew out wide.  "That is such a pretty mouth."  The man's voice twisted with want.

Dean trembled, feeling tears gather along the rims of his eyelids.

 

He was a child again.

 

* * *

 

The man rested a large, sweaty palm on Dean's cheek, stroking the unblemished skin appreciatively. "Your daddy said you'd be a good boy for me, Dean. Was he right? Are you going to be a _good_ boy?"

_This never happened! My father never did that - would never do that!_

The hand moved, gliding over Dean's chest and abdomen in long, salacious strokes. "So beautiful."

Dean shuddered, trying to force his child's body to move, but it wouldn't respond to his commands.

The man licked his lips, skin around his eyes tightening, pulse beating steadily in his temple as he cupped the young boy's prepubescent genitalia in one massive palm.

Dean closed his eyes. _No no no. This isn't right. Don't do this!_

A meaty finger quested further, probing insistently.

_Nonononono -_

 

* * *

 

 

"'No,' Dean? ' _No_ '?"

He was on the rack again, adult and whole, and the relief nearly overwhelmed him. "Alastair -" He sobbed the name, having no idea what words might follow.

"Are you ready to take up my blade, Dean?" Alastair leaned in close, and it was the pedophile's breath that assaulted Dean's nostrils. "I know it's early in the day to be asking, but you seem so...upset."

 

_\--  It's fire and tearing and he's never felt agony like this before,_

_\--  pain, plenty of pain, but not like this_ -

 

Dean remembered all too well what being raped had felt like as an adult.

He couldn't imagine what soul-rending fear and agony and despair he would experience as a small child.

 

"That man? That pedophile running his hands all over your sweet, _young_ body? He's a _soul_ , Dean. A new soul to Hell. Serial rapist and murderer of young boys, just completed his sentence on Death Row." Alastair mimicked sticking a needle into his own vein, a coarse parody of death by lethal injection. "I could give him to you, Dean. He could be your first."

 

Dean was tempted. He was sickeningly, powerfully, _righteously_ tempted.

 

And then Alastair licked his lips, anticipation of victory a potent lust in his eyes.

 

_Why does he want this so bad?_

Despair crushed him in a suffocating blackness.

_There's a price...there's gotta be a price...and whatever it is, it's worse than this._

A single sob choked him.

_What could be worse than this?_

But he knew what his father would say.

Knew what he had to do.

 

"No."

 

His soul split in two.

 

* * *

 

The man reeked of sweat and feces.

 

He pulled the sheets from Dean’s body, and gooseflesh pebbled the young boy’s skin.

The man hovered, troll-like, nearly salivating with desire as he devoured the boy with his hands, consumed him with his eyes.

He turned the boy over, and Dean sobbed, paralysis rendering him helpless.

 

Hopeless.

 

\-- _his mind screams and he panics_ \--

 

The moist decay of the man’s breath was hot on his ear: “You be good for me, boy.  I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

 

And they both knew it was a lie, that the thing this man wanted most in the world was an excuse to mark that perfect flesh, pull agonized cries from the boy that would wrench the most exquisite bliss from the vile human monster now hovering over his prey --

So when he thrust brutally into the boy, splitting the child in two with his barbarous lust, it was the boy’s mindless, hopeless, horrified shriek that ignited the fire of the brute’s orgasm.

 

* * *

 

 

Dean lay face down on the mattress, bile trickling from his nose and mouth, blood a bright splash of crimson on his pale thighs.

He was  hemorrhaging internally, cardiovascular system failing, seconds away from death.

Alastair lay beside him, breath warm and sweet on Dean’s face, stroking the boy’s hair with tender fingers.  “What an awful, _awful_ man he is, Dean.  A monster, really.”

A tear balanced on the sharp ridge of the boy’s perfect nose, winking briefly before dropping to the soiled sheet.

“You can pay him back, Dean.  Avenge your own death.”

A long razor appeared in Alastair’s hand.  It glowed warmly in the weak light, a thing of beauty.

“Would you like to do that, Dean?  Would you like to punish this man for all of the pain and suffering he has wrought on young, innocent children such as yourself?”

 

The answer rode on the boy’s final heartbeat:

 

“No.”

 


	10. THE GOD THAT FAILED

* * *

 

“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”

 

_Tearing, bludgeoning, horrifying pain, and he doesn’t understand why this is happening,_

_adults aren’t supposed to hurt you, unless you’d been bad, and he didn’t think he’d been bad,_

_but the man said something about his dad, and had he done something wrong?_

_Was his father mad at him, and that’s why this man was hurting him, hurting him so bad,_

_please stop, I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again, please --_

 

Alastair shook his head.  “Tsk, tsk, tsk.  The great Dean Winchester, hunter extrordinaire, already crying before the day has even begun.”  He lifted the man’s head by his hair, grimacing.  “Pitiful.”

Dean was trapped in the horror of the day before.   _Should I have taken the blade?  Killed that guy?  Would it have mattered?_

As if reading his thoughts, Alastair stroked the backs of his fingers through the man’s tears.  “How about if we give you another shot?”

 

* * *

 

He was standing against a wall in a dingy hotel room.  Not tied to anything, not bound, yet unable to move.

Sam -- _Sammy_ , the scrawny, long-haired six year old whose face was all eyes -- sat up in the bed, blanket falling away to reveal his bare and pitifully bony torso.

“Dean?  What are we doing here?”

_Oh God.  I can’t.  I can’t do this._

The door opened.

_It’s not real.  This never happened.  I’m an adult, he’s a little kid.  That couldn’t be.  This never happened._

The same pale-faced, rancid pervert from the day before entered the room, closing and bolting the door behind him.

“Hey, Sammy.  That’s your name, right?”

“It -- it’s ‘Sam’.”

_Not him.  Sam’s an adult, topside, maybe even in Heaven by now.  It’s not  him._

“Alright: Sam.  Your daddy said you’d be a good boy for me.  Is he right?  Are you going to be a good boy?”

The man had removed his belt as he spoke.

“Because bad things happen to naughty boys that come to me, don’t they, Dean?”

_Not real.  Not real._

Dean closed his eyes, willing himself not to see, not to hear.

“I...I’m a g-good boy.  Right, Dean?  I’m a good boy!”

 _He_ is _good. Sam is_ good _, and if he’s not topside, he’s in Heaven, not here, because_ Sam _is_ good _._

But he couldn’t move, or speak.  There was no way at all for Dean to help the innocent boy on the bed.

Sam's high-pitched, frantic voice cut through Dean's resolve.  “Why...why are you....you’re not supposed to touch me there!”

 

Dean sobbed.

 

* * *

 

 

Alastair appeared, body tight against Dean’s, breath hot on the man's lips.  “You can end this.”  He pried Dean’s fingers loose from one tightly clenched fist, pressing the  handle of his razor into it.  “I’ll release your paralysis, and you can end this.”  

Dean’s fist closed around the weapon.

He was shaking.

Alastair patted him on the cheek.  “Good boy.  Go save your brother.”

He disappeared.

 

* * *

 

 

Sam was on the bed, mouth widened in horror, the disgusting man’s hand between his spread thighs.

The boy turned, eyes swimming with tears, to the one person that had never let anything bad happen to him before.  “D-Dean?”

Dean raised the blade --

 

and slit his own throat.

  
  
  
  



	11. PULLING TEETH

* * *

 

“You’re wrong, you know.”

Dean didn’t care enough to ask.

Alastair enlightened him anyway.  “You do have a body.  They didn’t burn you.  They buried you.”

That almost got his attention.  “What?”  His voice was weary. _Doesn’t matter.  He’s lying anyway._

“Bobby wanted to light you up, but your brother wouldn’t let  him.  He was convinced that he could find a way to bring you back.  That’s what he let Bobby think, anyway.”  Alastair smiled, caressing Dean’s inner thigh.  “In reality he is willing to take you in any form, including a ghost.”  He ran his fingernails over his toy’s scrotum, chuckling as the skin tightened, drawing away from him.  “That’s why you feel everything.  React so perfectly, no matter how hard you try not to.  You are actually your own vessel.”

Dean tried to find a reason to care, and couldn’t.

“I’ll have to remember to thank Sam for that.  He’s made my time with you so much more pleasurable.”  He stroked Dean’s flaccid penis.  “Maybe next time I'll let you have a conjugal visit so I can pop in for a minute, show him my appreciation.”  

Dean looked up at the change in the demon’s voice --

 

And looked into his own eyes.

 

“I could show him what your body looks like at the end of a day on my rack --”  the face before him changed, blood and colorless gel oozing from one eye socket, a cheek torn away, exposing teeth, remainder of the lips sewn shut with thick, black thread.  

“Or I could show him how much his big brother truly loves him.”  The figure shifted once more, the features perfect, body nude, glistening with sweat, muscles taut, cock red and straining.

Dean didn’t want to react, tried to tell himself it wouldn’t happen, Alastair was just fucking with him, but he felt the fear rise, knew the son of a bitch was going to get exactly what he wanted.

Again.

“Or I could just let him watch.”  He was back to himself, razor in hand, nude and hard.  He ran the blade horizontally across Dean’s chest, smiling at the cascade of blood.  He leaned down, lapping at it.  “Mmmm...You taste so good, Dean.”  He straightened, gripping the hunter’s jaw at the hinges.  He held up a small silver hammer.  “Rock hammer.  Do you like it?”

Dean’s eyes were glazed.

He’d gone away.  Not lost in memory, not in a happy place.  Just...gone.

Alastair tightened his grip slowly, a vice clamping down on bunched muscle, on tendons...then on bones.

Dean’s expression didn’t change, but tears ran down his face.

The pressure forced his mandible to drop.

Alastair stopped, hammer poised to strike.  “Hmmmm…”

He released his hold abruptly, and Dean’s chin hit his chest.

A waving motion with both hands replaced the hammer with a wicked-looking curved needle, threaded with thick, black suture.  “Head up, Dean.”

The man did not respond.

Alastair struck him, a backhanded blow that rocked the hunter and reverberated off the walls.

The skin on Dean’s cheek went from pale to red to purple immediately.

Alastair rolled his eyes.  “You’re really not much fun like this, you know.”

He snapped his fingers, and a strap crossed Dean’s forehead, securing him to the rack with his chin raised.

“That’s better.”

He went to work with the needle and thread, pinning Dean’s lips back.  “Don’t want to damage those cock-sucking lips.  Not just yet.”

 

* * *

 

He spent the next two hours removing all of Dean’s teeth.

 

* * *

 

The young man’s cries of pain were muted, half-hearted.  His expression remained placid.  

His mind was blank, shut down, in a state of mental catatonia.

The worst had happened: he had failed his little brother. It was all that he was, the one thing that truly defined him, and he could have done something, could have taken Alastair’s blade, could have negotiated to have his life back, to save Sam.

But he had said ‘no’.

 

There was nothing left.

 

So when Alastair forced him to his knees, thrust his impossibly large phallus literally down Dean’s throat, when that conjured body part turned into a fanged serpent that devoured Dean from the inside out --

The man remained passive, staring at nothing, thinking nothing.

And when Alastair withdrew long enough to ask the inevitable question, he received no answer.

 

None at all.


	12. THROUGH THE NEVER

* * *

 

 

“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”  Alastair chuckled, and a coiled bullwhip appeared in his hand.  “Nevermind: I already know what it will be.”  He allowed the braided leather to unwind, graceful and menacing, to pool at his feet.  “You were a very naughty boy the other day, Dean.  You remember what happens to naughty boys, don’t you?”

 

_I didn’t save him._

_It doesn’t matter: it wasn’t Sam!_

 

Dean welcomed the bite of the lash.

 

* * *

 

 

Alastair surveyed his battered toy.

Sweat, snot, and tears dripped from the man’s face in equal proportions, wetting the floor at his feet.

Skin hung in tatters down his back, and in places white bone shone through.

The back of his body was coated with blood from his shoulders to his heels, and he stood in a congealing pool of the stuff.

 

Topside, he would have been dead by now.

 

Here, he had screamed until his vocal folds failed, and then he had continued, the actions soundless.

Alastair gripped the man’s sweaty  hair in a tight fist at the back of his skull, raising the hunter’s face.  

Bloodshot eyes swam, struggling to focus.

The lush mouth that Alastair so loved to bury his cock in hung lax.

“The man who beat and raped your innocent little brother is still  here, Dean.  Would you like to take a crack at him?  Teach him not to mess with a Winchester?  Show him what happens to anyone that dares to lay a hand on _your_ Sammy?”

 

He held the razor up, turning it enticingly.

 

Those cock-sucking lips moved, and although Dean was unable to make a sound, Alastair knew what he was saying:

 

“No.”

 

* * *

 

 

As cruel as the demon was, it was rare for him to lose his temper.

 

He did so now.

 

Stepping to the side, he flicked his wrist.

The wall that formed the front of Dean’s prison disappeared, and a raucous cheering assaulted his ears.

 

Dean flinched.

 

“You see all of those demons out there, Dean?”  Alastair’s spittle flecked Dean’s skin as the demon hissed into his ear through clenched teeth.  “There are thousands of them, Dean.   _Thousands_.  Each one was given a task, and promised a reward for completing said task.”  He used his grip on the man’s hair to turn his head, allowing the hunter a chance to scan the crowd of excited demons.  “Wanna guess what that reward is?”

He thrust his toy’s head away, and Dean was whole once more.

“You!”  Alastair’s bony finger picked out a burly, long-fanged beast at the front of the crowd.  “You’re first.”

The creature stepped forward, salivating in his eagerness.  “Do I have to save some for the others?”

Alastair shook his head.  “I can rebuild him.  He’s all yours.”

 

* * *

 

 

Alastair watched, letting them have the boy, sometimes in singles, sometimes in groups of two or three.  He picked out a few that looked promising, making a mental note to ask Lucifer if he could take over their training.  He needed some fresh disciples.

 

Initially his curiosity kept him entertained, as he was interested in seeing how creative Hell’s minions would get.  After all, each had spent time on the rack -- Alastair’s rack -- and he expected them to  have learned _some_ thing.

The rapes were expected and uninspired -- though the demons themselves seemed pleased, and Dean almost always screamed at least once.  He was surprised at how many of them wanted to cannibalize the hunter, and made a note to mention something to Lucifer about adding more human meat to the cafeteria's menu.  A few thought to feed the man pieces of his own flesh, particularly his genitals.  Some cut off chunks and fed them to Hellhounds.  One gutted the boy, sharing the entrails between himself and several hounds before cutting out Dean’s heart and forcing it down his throat, suffocating him.  

 

Alastair made sure to get that one’s name.

 

Each time the hunter was almost done, nothing but scraps left of his fragile vessel, Alastair would step in, offering him the blade and a chance to escape.

 

Each time, the miserably little fuck denied him.

 

* * *

 

 

Alastair had had enough.  It was time to up the ante.

He collected a bowl of Dean’s blood, using it to contact Lucifer’s personal assistant.

 

“I need to talk to Lucifer about obtaining Sam Winchester.”

 


	13. HARVESTER OF SORROWS

* * *

 

“Alright, Alastair.  You wanted a meeting, you’ve got --” the King of Hell checked his watch -- “ten minutes.  What seems to be the problem?”

“Dean Winchester.  He is as stubborn as his father.”

Lucifer rolled his eyes.  “You had nearly a freakin’ century -- “

“And he _never_ broke --"

"Good thing he wasn't truly righteous."  Lucifer crossed his legs, folding his hands over one knee.  "Of course, you are the one responsible for the fact the he is now in Heaven, and completely out of our reach."

"It was Azazel who opened the gate --"

"But you who allowed the  man to atone for his sins.  If it'd just been Azazel's fuck-up, we'd have had Winchester's less-than-righteous ass back here, and you could have used that sanctimonious asshole against his precious older son."

"I had your blessing with the eldest Winchester, Sire.  We were hoping to learn how to break the Righteous Man."

“And you’ve only had, what,  five years?  Ten?  I lost track, but still, it's been, what, a quarter of the time you had with John?  Not even.  About two months topside, and all of the pieces aren't in place up there yet, either.  No one's been breathing down your neck.  So you’re here blubbering to me about  _ what _ , again?”

“We don't have another one hundred years.  Pain won't break him: I need to attack  his sense of self.  His _soul_."  Alastair paused, knowing how volatile his master could be, and how dangerous his request was.  "I need his brother.  I need Sam Winchester.”

 

Lucifer sat back, narrowing his eyes in a manner that birthed fear even in Hell’s Grand Torturer.

 

“Sam Winchester.   _ My  _ vessel.”

 

“He is Dean’s only weakness.  I used a likeness of him, a child, and the Righteous Man almost broke -- “

 

“ _MY VESSEL_.”

 

Lucifer had risen to his feet on his dais to stand towering over Alastair.

The torturer cowered, backing away.

“Pain just isn’t enough, my liege.  It wasn’t with John, and it hasn’t been for his son.”

“Or maybe YOU aren’t enough, Alastair.  Maybe I overestimated your abilities.”

Alastair trembled.  To be demoted would mean that he would be put on the rack himself.   _ Lucifer’s  _ rack.

Or, worse yet, be sent topside.  He  _ hated  _ going topside.

“Each death equals a day,” Alastair explained, grovelling just a bit.  “I allowed every unoccupied demon in Hell to spend some quality time with Dean Winchester, one on one, so to speak.   _Every_. _One_.  He went through over three thousand days with that alone, and he _still_ did not break.”

Lucifer sat, and Alastair hid his sigh of relief behind a cough.

“I still don’t see how  _ your  _ failure means that  _ I _ have to give up _my_ vessel.  What good does it do to break the first seal if I don’t have a vessel to use when I fight Micheal?  What do you expect me to do, possess Hugh Hefner?”

“I wouldn’t ask you to give him up, Sire.  Just...let me borrow his soul.  I’ll give it back when I’m done!”

Lucifer shook his head.  He rested an elbow on the arm of his throne, cradling his chin in his  hand.  The fingers of the other drummed on the smooth wood of the elaborate seat.  “Sam is already close to suicidal, and if he does that, he’s lost to me.  You can’t play with his soul.”  He sat up, pointing a sharp-tipped nail at his cowering servant.  “I’ll tell you what I _will_ do, though: I’ll let you have an incubus.  Or a succubus.  Whichever I’ve got more of lying around.”

Alastair licked his lips nervously.  “Sire, I have tried --”

Lucifer waved a  hand impatiently.  “Not for that.  If pain won’t get him, sex won’t either.  But an incubus can bring part of a person’s soul, their _consciousness_ , to a space in the Veil that we can use.  It can also access memories.  You’re telling me the only way to break the little prick is to fuck with his psyche, right?”

Alastair tipped his head in acknowledgement.

“Well, you need to take your time, build some scenarios, bring some other souls into it.  Make it seem _real_.”  He stabbed a finger in Alastair’s direction once more.  “But NOT Sam Winchester.  Sammy is _mine_.”

Alastair bowed.  “Thank you, Sire.”

Lucifer grunted, waving him away impatiently.  “Just get this done, Alastair, or for every time that you fail, you’ll spend an hour as my Hellhound’s chew toy.”

"Yes, Sire."  He backed from the room.

 

* * *

  
  


Alastair could not help but admire the Incubus.

They had rotated the rack into a horizontal position.  The Incubus -- a black, winged creature that Alastair found completely repulsive -- straddled the prone hunter, hunched over the man, staring intently into its victim’s face as clawed fingers sifted through the man’s brain, extracting memories.

The creature’s engorged phallus pulsed with each tortured cry from the man beneath it.

Alastair’s did, as well.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Lucifer had summoned him, demanding a report.

“So, got some ideas?”  He leaned forward on his throne, face both menacing and expectant.

“Oh, yes, my liege.  The Incubus has already been tremendously helpful.”  Alastair could kiss ass with the best of them, when his own skin was at stake.

“Good, good.”  Lucifer sat back, rubbing his hands together.  “Give us a little tease.”

“He has many perceived failures, or near failures.  Hunts that could have ended in disaster.  And there is an impressive list of  people that he feels responsible for, or cares for: Bobby, a man called Sonny, girls named Robin and Cassie.  A woman named Ellen and her daughter Jo.  I have a lot to work with.”

“Fabulous.  Get to it.”

He clapped his hands, and Alastair disappeared.

 


	14. ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is extremely graphic.

* * *

 

"So, what'll it be today, Mr. Winchester?"

 _Flat on my back, strapped to a fuckin' autopsy table. Chin strap, can't even open my fucking mouth._ Starting the day angry beat the hell out of starting it afraid. "Iz it too late to request an upgrade to the prezidential suite?" The words were distorted, but intelligible.

Alastair chuckled. "Don't expect that from the souls you deal with, " he addressed a slightly confused looking demon who stood beside him, dressed in the garb of a medical examiner. "Dean Winchester is...unique."

"Aw, you big softie. Now I know who sent the flowers."  _You won't fuckin' break me, you sadistic fuck._

Alastair allowed his fingers to trail along his subject's skin as he paced from the man's foot to a position at about waist-level.

The younger demon followed suit, and Dean bit back a snarl, skin crawling at the new demon's touch.  _Not a fucking toy._

Alastair caressed the skin of Dean's abdomen with one hand, brandishing a large scalpel with the other. "Now, an important detail to remember is that Hell-torture has to be more than just painful: it must be terrifying. Horrifying. The stuff of nightm- "

"Why d' yo' talk like dat?"  _Muzzle me like I'm a rabid fucking dog, see if I don't still make a fool out of you._

"This is my apprentice. I'm just explaining -"

Dean rolled his eyes. "I don' mean dat. Mean the weird nasally t'ing. Like yo' got a d'ck st'ck in yo'r throat."

He saw the flash of murderous rage that Alastair quickly subdued. "That reminds me -" he gripped the hunter's flaccid penis with his left hand, slicing it off at the base with his right - "I haven't had breakfast yet."

 _He just ate my dick!_ Dean tried to relax his widened eyes, an exercise made infinitely easier by the wave of nausea that hit him.

Alastair was chewing with exaggerated enthusiasm.

And an open mouth.

Vomit flowed from Dean's nose, spurting forcefully through his clenched teeth.

_Hopefully I'll bleed out quick._

_No big deal; it'll be back tomorrow._

_Sad thing is I can't think of too many reasons to_ want _it back._

It was hard to clear his lungs with his jaw tied shut. Unfortunately, he'd already learned that he didn't actually need to breathe to stay alive.

Or what passed for alive in Hell.

"As I was saying," Alastair continued. "Horrify. Now, when I was fortunate enough to possess an army surgeon during the civil war, I had many opportunities to both horrify and inflict pain, all under the guise of helping injured soldiers."

"Nice," the novice demon murmured.

Since he was stroking the circular wound in Dean's groin at the time, coating his fingers like the arterial spray was a fondue fountain, Dean wasn't sure whether the apprentice was impressed with Alastair's former position or his recent work.

_Maybe it's both._

"We'll work on amputations later. Right now, I'd like to start with an anatomy lesson." Alastair turned so that his body was perpendicular to the table. He gripped Dean's shoulder with his left hand, placing the tip of his blade in the notch where the man's collar bones met his sternum. "I know that the typical autopsy uses a 'Y' incision, but I prefer a slightly different approach." He looked over his shoulder, nodding in satisfaction at the intense concentration on the face of his student. "Note the handle of the scalpel in my palm, forefinger at the base of the blade. Lift to deepen the angle, press with the forefinger, and draw the blade down the torso in a smooth, steady motion."

Skin parted, blood welling.

_Not real. You don't have a body. It's not real._

"Not too quickly, or the incision won't be deep enough." The blade dropped off of Dean's xyphoid process, continuing down the midline of his abdomen. "Now, I typically end this incision at the line of pubic hair - hair dulls the blade quickly. In this case, I'll just join it to the previous incision. I'll show you why in a moment."

Dean had been nearly ignoring the insane burn that his phantom penis had become, but he couldn't prevent a strong blink when the blade touched it, reigniting the dying flame.

_Focus on your breathing, Dean. In...out. Keep it...nice….and….slow._

He closed his eyes.

"Now, the next incision varies depending on what you want to do. Let's get some of this skin out of the way, and I'll show you."

Despite himself, Dean felt his eyes pop open, wide and alarmed.

"We'll make this an 'I' incision, like the capital letter."

Dean felt the sharp bite of the blade just under his last rib, starting on the left and running across to the other side. Unable to see himself, he instead conjured an image of thin lines of lava erupting from narrow fissures in his skin, with a pool of it over his groin.

It glowed yellow-orange, but as he closed his eyes and focused, he was able to cool it, first to red, then to black, watching it crust over into stone.

Instead of an insistent burn, it had become a comforting warmth.

"Now." Alastair's fingernails picked at the edge of the incision where it met the ruin of Dean's groin.

The illusion of cooled lava shattered, and Dean heard himself grunt.

_Don't scream not real can't hurt you will not fucking scream_

"You've hunted animals, I assume? When you were human? And skinned them?"

"Yeah. I was actually a taxidermist."

Alastair nodded, pleased. "Excellent. Well, human skin is much harder to peel, especially on someone like Dean, who has always had a minimal amount of body fat." He held up a blade, glowing with heat. "I like to use a dull blade to undermine it. I heated it to cauterize as we go so that blood doesn't obscure the features I want to show you, but for shock-and-awe, I recommend avoiding that step. There's nothing like seeing blood everywhere to throw a new soul into a delicious panic."

He used his fingernails to lift the thin flap of tissue he had freed, thrusting the blade beneath it.

Dean jerked, restraints creaking.

_Doesn't hurt can't hurt no body not real_

"You just work it around," the dull blade moved in short, hard stabbing motions, parallel to the plane of Dean's abdomen, and his body tightened, a scream building in his head.

_Not real don't scream over soon_

"You can start the other side." Alastair nodded toward his apprentice, and a flat, rounded blade appeared in the demon's hand. "Don't forget to heat it."

Dean trembled with the effort of holding himself still.  _Don't let 'em know no fucking reward for them doesn't hurt over soon doesn't hurt don't scream dont scream dontscream_

But when Alastair said, "I think we can pull now," and each demon gripped a flap of flesh with both hands, pulling skin away from underlying muscle, his body rebelled against the strict control of his soul, and he screamed.

Alastair winked at his apprentice. " _Now_  we're getting somewhere!"

* * *

There was a thing that happened when it got too bad, and Dean had been working on controlling it, like a lucid dream, so he could make it happen at will.

He went away.

It was an odd sensation of being separate yet present, observing and feeling it all, but muted. Everything: the pain, the horror, the rage, the hopelessness, all wrapped in cotton. Almost like it was happening to someone else, but not quite.

He was in that place now, floating near the ceiling, watching Alastair's anatomy instruction with interest.

"You can cut through the linea alba," which he did, the thick white tissue parting with bloodless ease, "which gives you excellent access to the abdominal contents with a minimal amount of pain and hemorrhage. It's a nice tease, in my opinion, because the subjects always expect so much worse. You lull them with this, then reach in -"

Dean watched as the instructor's hand was swallowed by the rent in the man's -  _that's you, you idiot_  - abdomen.

"- and pull out a loop of intestine to show them."

The pain was breath-taking...sort of.

Alastair held a glistening gray-pink tube up for Dean's inspection. Dean watched his slow, unimpressed blink.  _Ha. Take that, you sadistic fuck._

Alastair pushed the organ back into place, and Dean saw his body buck against its restraints, bile erupting from his nose, forcing its way between his teeth.

"You can also cut through the muscles." The head torturer retrieved his blade, cutting through the  _rectus abdominus_  muscles near their attachments to Dean's ribs.

The body made a keening sound. The spine bowed, pulling away from the blade.

"This can be very rewarding, as there is much more pain, as well as a very pleasing amount of hemorrhage." He continued the incision until the incision formed a 't'. "You'll notice that a well-muscled subject such as this requires either multiple passes or a larger blade, as the flesh in this case is thicker than the blade is wide." He returned to the end of the incision, and blood sprayed as he completed a second, then a third pass.

"Now, I started up here to show you something: you may have noticed that with the midline incision, each time the patient contracted in pain, intestines bulged out of the cut. While it can be lovely to observe the effect that seeing one's own intestines spilling out on the floor has on a victim, there are times when it is just plain annoying to have them in your way." He drew the flaps of muscle aside, and Dean's body shuddered. "If your first incision is just below the ribs, you will encounter some nice, large organs: liver," he stroked the red-brown organ lovingly, "the tongue-like spleen," he drew this long, slender mass of tissue out of the man's abdomen, and Dean watched the blood drain from his face, "and the stomach." Alastair slid his hand beneath a pale, flaccid organ, lifting it, and vomit once again ran from the subject's nose.

"With this incision, the subject can tense and scream however it likes, and the organs will stay inside the abdomen. If your toy is standing, you can reach a hand inside, your face intimately close to your pet's, and play with whatever you like."

Dean could see the shudders racking his body, knew that he was feeling such exquisite misery that it left him breathless, that far away a part of him was begging for it to end, begging to die, but it was all so...surreal.

"Spleen bleeds easily, so avoid it unless you're ready to let the soul go for the day. It does fry up nicely, though, as, of course, does the liver. Liver, too, should be left until the end: it has many, many blood vessels, and the tissue does not hold suture well. Cautery may work, but not if you've taken an entire lobe."

The instructing demon had removed the majority of the spleen from the abdominal cavity, handling it with care, preserving the blood supply. "The spleen is really only attached well at one end, so you can, if your patient is prone, move it out of your way to provide easier access to the kidneys." He stretched the organ out on the table.

Dean could feel it pressing against him, and despite how oddly removed he felt from the situation, it still disgusted him enough to make him cringe away from it.

"The intestines can be removed, as well, providing you preserve this bundle of vessels at the root of the mesentery. Again, if you are ready to allow your patient to bleed out, go ahead and just tear all of this. We'll get to see all of that when we're done here." He was piling Dean's intestines on the table like he was serving pasta from a bowl.

"Now, see how empty it is? We've got the urinary bladder -" he held it up, and Dean watched color rise in his cheeks as urine ran out of the hole in his groin. He heard himself whine through gritted teeth as the fluid scalded the raw flesh where his penis used to be. "And my goal: the kidneys."

He flicked one with his finger, and Dean watched his back arch, felt himself scream.

"Technically they are outside of the peritoneal cavity, which just means that you have to tear this membrane to get to them." He did so, and Dean's body writhed.

"It's well worth the effort, though, because these beautiful little things not only make excellent pie, they are also filled with nerve endings." He slid a kidney into his palm. "In the fetus, the kidneys and testicles begin from the same tissue. That means that the renal tissue is least as sensitive, if not more so, than the testes." He squeezed, and suddenly Dean was back in his body, screaming mindlessly, his entire existence reduced to the most excruciating sensation imaginable, and he did not even feel himself convulsing.

 

He always came back like that just before he died.


	15. OF WOLF AND MAN 1

* * *

 

Dean woke to someone slapping his face and calling his name.

He scrambled backwards, hands up, eyes wild, stopping only when his shoulders and the back of his skull impacted something hard.

“Bobby?”

The gruff old hunter’s eyes were full of concern.  “Hey, kid.  How you feelin’?”

Dean looked around in confused panic.   _Bobby’s guest room._ “Where’s Sam?”

“He’s off at college, remember?  We been keepin’ tabs on him.  He’s good; safe.  Got a girlfriend.”

Dean settled back onto the bed,  heart racing.   _What the fuck is going on?_

“You alright, son?  That werewolf rung your bell pretty hard.”

He pressed a hand to his temple, realizing that his head did hurt.  “Yeah.  ‘M okay.  Just need a minute.”

His brain was spinning.   _Sam’s in college?  I was hunting a werewolf? Wasn’t I in Hell?  Sammy’s safe?  He didn’t die?  Didn’t I get him from Stanford to go look for Dad? And then Dad died, and Sammy…._

“Where’s Dad?”

“He went after those witches in Illinois, remember?  Left us to tackle the ‘wolves.”

Dean remembered that hunt.  Remembered getting hurt, Bobby hauling his ass out of there.  “We didn’t get them….”

“No.”  He patted Dean’s leg.  “But we didn’t get dead, either.  We got two more nights ‘fore the moon gets too far from full.  If you’re feelin’ up to it, we’ll go back out tonight.”

“Yeah.  Okay.”   _Something’s not right._  He squeezed his skull with both hands, willing the spinning thoughts to stop, or at least slow down.

“Lemme get ya some aspirin.”

“Thanks, Bobby.”

 

As soon as the older man left the room, Dean got up, ignoring the mild dizziness and nausea that told him had a concussion.  He crossed the room, touching the curtain gently at first, then gripping the cloth to run it between his finger and thumb. _Feels real._ He looked out the window, and the view was everything he should have expected: Gnarled tree still the same, junked hulks of dead cars still the same.  He touched the glass, and it was cold and smooth and solid.   _What the fuck?_

He went into the bathroom, watching the stream of urine hit the porcelain bowl with something akin to amazement.   _Why does it feel like I haven’t had to do that for a very long time?_ He shook off, and moved with an uncomfortable buzz of anticipation to the sink.  He leaned on the counter, staring into his face, searching his eyes.

_Did none of that happen?  Was I never in Hell?_

There was no trace of it that he could find.  Nothing of the horror he thought he’d endured was lurking in his eyes.

_What the fuck?_

He washed his hands, then looked around the room, debating his next move.   _Shower.  I really, really want a shower.  Hot water, steam, soap._  He was pulling his clothes off before the thought completed running its course, and the sensation of hard jets massaging his skull was the best thing he had ever felt in his life.

He examined his body as he lathered it. _No new scars.  But old ones are still there.  I thought they were gone, thought it was all gone, body brand-spanking-new every day, ready to be --_ He shook the rising hysteria off. _It wasn’t real.  Sammy never died and Dad never died and I never went to Hell and Alastair….Who the fuck is Alastair?  Where did_ that _name come from?_

He showered until the water turned lukewarm.  The towel was soft and fluffy, and his clean clothes smelled amazing.  

And bacon.  Bobby was cooking bacon.

_When was the last time I ate?  Jesus god, I’m hungry!_

He almost fell rushing down the stairs too quickly.

Bobby chuckled as Dean dropped into a chair, eyes wide, practically drooling.  “Hungry?”

“Starving.”  

Bobby dropped a full plate in front of his young friend before sitting down across from him with his own.  His eyebrows shot up as he watched the other man demolish his meal.  “You lose all your teeth or something?”

Dean paused, glancing up with his head over his plate, fork halfway to his mouth.  “What?”

“Most people chew at least a little bit.”

Dean gulped, lowering his fork.   _Why am I so afraid right now?  Why do I expect to be punished?  Bobby’s never hurt me._  “I’m sorry.  I don’t know why I’m so hungry.”

Bobby chuckled.  “Growing boy, got some injuries.”  His eyes narrowed.  “That dog didn’t bite you, did it?  I never seen anyone change, but I imagine becoming a werewolf carries quite an appetite with it.”

“No.”  Dean shook his head, eyes darting to his plate and back to Bobby.  “I checked myself in the shower.  No bites, no breaks in the skin.”

“Good.”  

The hand holding the fork was trembling, and Dean’s eyes kept darting to his food.

Bobby pushed his own plate across.  “You really are hungry, aren’t you?”

The slight curve of Dean’s lips was tentative.  “Yeah… you sure you don’t want this, Bobby?”

The older man chuckled, patting his belly.  “I already ate once today.  ‘Sides, I can always make more.”

“Thanks, Bobby.  I’ll clean up though, okay?”

“Sounds fair.  You mind if I leave you to it?  Got a few calls to make.”

“Sure.”  He looked up, a pitiful degree of gratitude in his eyes.  “Thanks, Bobby.”

Concern and confusion flitted across the older man’s face, but he just smiled.  “No problem, son.  Nice to have my cooking appreciated.”  He patted the younger man’s shoulder on the way out.

 

* * *

  


“Dad. We need you.” Dean fought the blackness seeping into his mind, struggling to stay conscious long enough to get them to safety.

 _“What happened?”_ There was no fear in the man's voice, just a suppressed irritation, and Dean's panic eased.

“Werewolves. And...I shot him..” Dean hated himself for the sob that escaped him. “I shot Bobby.”

 _“Christ, Dean.”_ The irritation had escalated. _“Where? Is he alive? How bad is the bleeding?”_

“Stomach. He's alive, bleeding bad.  He passed out.”  The blackness kept taunting him.  It was hard to think.  “Should I take him to a hospital?”

_“With a bullet would? Come on, son.  You know better than that.  Just get him home. I'm on the way.”_

The line went dead.  Dean dropped the phone, returning his bloody, shaking hand to the steering wheel.   _Just get him home._

 

* * *

  


John strode into the room, wiping Bobby’s blood from his hands.

“So, you wanna tell me what happened out there, Dean?”

The younger hunter was trying to clean out the deep lacerations that crossed his ribs, and the pain had him nearly breathless.  “Gun jammed.”

“What?”  John’s voice had taken on a cutting edge.  “The 1911?”

Dean nodded, concentrating on his wounds.

“That thing never jams.  Where is it?”

Dean gestured with his head.  “Pillow.”

John retrieved the gun.

Dean had finished rinsing his cuts with holy water, and braced himself for the next step: peroxide.  

The sound of  his father ejecting rounds from the magazine barely registered as he began pouring the cool fluid over his skin, hissing at the immediate and sharp burn that it caused.

“When was the last time you cleaned this?”

“What?”  His brain wanted to go offline, and he was tempted to let it.

“I said your fucking pistol is filthy.  When was the last time you cleaned it?”

The burn was intensifying, the bubbling liquid feeling for all the world like it was boiling his flesh.  “I -- I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know_?”

Dean didn’t miss the danger in that tone, and he struggled to focus.  “Can’t remember.” _Hurts.  Can’t think._

John set the pistol on the nightstand.  His hands moved to his belt.  “Strip.”

“What?”   _No.  He can’t...he’s not…_

“You know better, Dean.  Your weapon is your life, and your carelessness or laziness or whatever the fuck it was, that’s why it jammed.  Now strip.”  He had his belt in his hands.

Nausea and a horrified disbelief washed over him, and Dean swayed on his feet.  “Dad...I’m hurt.”

John crossed the room in two strides, striking his son with a vicious backhand swing of the belt wrapped around his fist.  The buckle hit, tearing a furrow in Dean’s cheek.  Dean staggered back, hand rising to his face, and the side of his knee hit the bed.

He fell onto it, and John was on him, fingers clawing for the button on  his son’s jeans.  

“Dad!  Stop!”

Another backhanded blow, this time from John’s free hand, split Dean’s lips and set off sparks behind his eyes.  He felt his father dragging his jeans down his legs, but was unable to force a response from his own body.

And then he was face down, and his father was raining fire down onto him, and knew he had to keep quiet and not move, but that belt was hitting the claw marks on his back and side, injuries that he had been certain his dad would clean and suture for him, and a whipping from Dad always hurt plenty, but the buckle striking raw flesh was an unbearable agony, and he couldn’t stop himself from jerking away --

“Hold still,” his father growled, grabbing Dean by the hair, lifting his face to glare into it.  “Bobby might die, and it will be _your_ fault if he does.”

_Jesus.  He can’t die. I didn’t mean --_

Still holding Dean’s head up, John brought the belt down with as much strength as he could, each strike emphasizing a word: “Clean. Your. Fucking. Gun.”

It was too much, and as hard as Dean tried to stay still and be quiet, his body could not, and he twisted away, leaving a handful of hair in his father’s hand, sobbing as his stomach convulsed.

He fell onto the floor, scrambling away mindlessly until he was up against the wall on his hands and knees, bile pooling between his spread fingers.

_I’m sorry.  Bobby, I’m sorry!  It was an accident!  Please don’t die.  Please._

The floor vibrated with the force of John’s approach, and Dean pressed his back into the corner, drawing his knees into his chest and throwing an arm over his head.  “Please, Dad, please.  I’m sorry, it was an accident, please --”

A razor landed on the floor in front of him.

“Who do you hate more right now, Dean?  Me, or yourself?”  A familiar boot toed the equally familiar blade, and the name ‘Alastair’ beat a pulse in Dean’s head.  “You can end this right now, boy.  Or it can keep going, day after day after day.  Your choice.”

Dean stared at the thin steel.  _Don't do it it's a trick don't do it_ \-- but he couldn't remember what he wasn't supposed to do.

“I know you hate me right now, you miserable little fuck.  Such a sorry excuse for a hunter.  I’m ashamed to even tell people that you’re my son, you know that?  And I’m not done with this.  I’m going to kick the shit out of you, and if Bobby dies, I will whip you until there’s no skin left to mark. You understand what I’m saying, Dean?  You are worthless and careless and a fucking disgrace.  Unless you show some fucking backbone, pick up that blade and come at me, you are no son of mine, and I am going to beat you like a dog --”

Dean picked up the blade

 

And drove it into his own heart.

 

* * *

 

Alastair looked over at the salivating incubus.

It had its dick in its hand, stroking furiously.

Alastair rolled his eyes.

“Alright, enough of that.  It was good, I admit, but it didn’t get the job done.”

The incubus turned matte black eyes on the demon.

“We’ll do it again tomorrow.  Once you're finished with that," he gestured at the thing's dripping phallus, "figure out how to up the ante.”  Alastair spared the creature one more disgusted glance before disappearing.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	16. OF WOLF AND MAN 2

* * *

 

Dean woke to someone slapping his face and calling his name.

He scrambled backwards, hands up, eyes wild, stopping only when his shoulders and the back of his skull impacted something hard.

“Bobby?”

The gruff old hunter’s eyes were full of concern.  “Hey, kid.  How you feelin’?”

Dean looked around in confused panic.   _Bobby’s guest room. Why does it feel like I’ve done this before?_ “Where’s Sam?”

“He’s off at college, remember?  We been keepin’ tabs on him.  He’s good; safe.  Got a girlfriend.”

Dean settled back onto the bed,  heart racing.   _Sam’s not dead?  He’s still in college?  And does he mean Jess?  Sam’s girlfriend Jess?  She’s not dead, either?_

“You alright, son?  That werewolf rung your bell pretty hard.”

He pressed a hand to his temple, realizing that his head did hurt.  “Yeah.  ‘M okay.  Just need a minute.”

His brain was spinning.   _I was hunting a werewolf?  Didn’t I get Sammy from Stanford to go look for Dad? And then Dad died, and Sammy…I traded my soul to get Sammy back.  Didn't I go to Hell?  A hound ripped me up...._

“Where’s Dad?”

“He went after those witches in Illinois, remember?  Left us to tackle the ‘wolves.”

Dean remembered that hunt.  Remembered getting hurt, Bobby hauling his ass out of there.  But there was more. _Didn’t it all go sideways?  Didn’t he end up hurt?  Didn’t he shoot Bobby by mistake?  And then Dad...didn't Dad take his belt to me?_   “We didn’t get them….”

“No.”  He patted Dean’s leg.  “But we didn’t get dead, either.  We got two more nights ‘fore the moon gets too far from full.  If you’re feelin’ up to it, we’ll go back out tonight.”

“Yeah.  Okay.”  He squeezed his skull with both hands, willing the spinning thoughts to stop, or at least slow down.  “Are you okay, Bobby?  Not hurt?”

The older man chuckled.  “Take more than some pissant werewolf to damage a salty ol’ dog like me.  I’m jus’ fine.  Lemme get ya some aspirin.”

“Thanks, Bobby.”   _Doesn't make sense.  None of this makes sense._

As soon as the older man left, Dean got up, ignoring the mild dizziness and nausea that told him had a concussion.  He crossed the room, touching the curtain gently at first, then gripping the cloth to run it between his finger and thumb. _Feels real._ He looked out the window, and the view was everything he should have expected: Gnarled tree still the same, junked hulks of dead cars still the same.  He touched the glass, and it was cold and smooth and solid.   _What the fuck?  This is Hell. This has to be Hell.  I was there, I know I was there._

He went into the bathroom, expecting to see blood in the sink, torn clothing in the garbage can.

There was nothing.  

He  moved with an uncomfortable buzz of anticipation to the sink.  He leaned on the counter, staring into his face, searching his eyes.

_Did none of that happen?  Are Dad and Sam really still alive? Was I never in Hell?_

There was no trace of it that he could find.  Nothing of the horror he thought he’d endured was lurking in his eyes.

_What the fuck?_

He looked around the room, debating his next move.   _Shower.  I should shower._

He examined his body as he lathered it. _No new scars.  But old ones are still there.  I thought they were gone, thought it was all gone, body brand-spanking-new every day, ready to be --_ He shook the rising hysteria off. _It wasn’t real.  Sammy never died and Dad never died and I never went to Hell and Alastair….If Alastair wasn’t real, how do I know that name?_

He showered until the water turned lukewarm.  The towel was soft and fluffy, and something smelled amazing.  

Coffee.  Bobby had made coffee.

 

* * *

 

Bobby chuckled as Dean dropped into a chair, hands curled around a chipped mug, practically drooling.  “I need to give you some privacy, there, boy?”

Dean ignored the jibe, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply.   _When was the last time I had a good cup of coffee?_

Bobby settled into a chair across from Dean’s.  “That werewolf didn’t bite you, did it?  I never seen anyone change, but I imagine becoming a werewolf heightens your sense of smell quite a bit.”

“No.”  Dean shook his head, eyes opening to admire the dark liquid as he blew across it.  “I checked myself in the shower.  No bites, no breaks in the skin.”

“Good.”  

Dean took a sip of the scalding brew, nearly vibrating with pleasure.   “This is awesome.”  He looked up, a pitiful degree of gratitude in his eyes.  “Thanks, Bobby.”

Concern and confusion flitted across the older man’s face, but he just smiled.  “No problem, son.  Most people hate my coffee.”  He patted the younger man’s shoulder on the way out.

  


* * *

 

 

“Bobby! Behind you!”

The hunt had gone seriously south, and Dean had no time to retrieve his knife from the chest of the werewolf at his feet.  He drew his Colt, intending to nail the one coming up on Bobby right through the heart --

 

His gun jammed.  

 

He stared at it in shock.   _This has happened before.  I know it’s happened before._

A tortured scream jerked him back into the present, and he looked up to see the werewolf bury its fangs into the older hunter’s shoulder.

“Bobby!”

He rammed the misfiring pistol into the back of his jeans, planted a boot on the body at his feet, and jerked his blade free.

The living wolf tossed Bobby away like yesterday’s newspaper, and Dean threw his knife, lip lifting in a satisfied sneer as it buried itself to the hilt in the werewolf’s heart.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Dad. We need you.” Dean fought the blackness seeping into his mind, struggling to stay conscious long enough to get to safety.

 " _What happened?”_ There was no fear in the man's voice, just a suppressed irritation, and Dean's panic escalated. _He’s already angry, and I haven’t even told him_ \--

 “Werewolves. And...I shot him..” Dean hated himself for the sob that escaped him. “I shot Bobby.”

  _“Christ, Dean.”_ The irritation had escalated. _“Where? Is he alive? How bad is the bleeding?”_

 “He -- he was bitten.  He started to turn, Dad.”  The blackness kept taunting him.  It was hard to breathe.  “I killed him, Dad.  I killed him.”

  _“Jesus Christ, son.  You let him get_ bit _?  You know better than that.”_ John’s disgust carried clearly across the cell phone connection. _“Just get him home. I'm on the way.”_

 The line went dead.  Dean dropped the phone, returning his bloody, shaking hand to the steering wheel.   _Just get him home._

  


* * *

  
John strode into the room, wiping Bobby’s blood from his hands.  “Get your shirt off.  I  need to get you patched up so we can give Singer a proper funeral.”

Dean had not stopped crying since the moment he realized he was going to have to kill the man that had always been good to him. _He looked right in my eyes when I pulled the trigger._

“Jesus Christ.”  Dean had peeled his shirt off, wincing as it pulled free from torn flesh, and John shook his head, clearly disgusted.  “What a fucking mess.  Get up on the table, face down. The ones on your back are deeper; I’ll take care of those first.”

Dean set his pistol on the counter.  He almost dropped his shirt on the floor, then thought better of it, jamming it between his teeth as he settled onto the kitchen table.

“So, you wanna tell me what happened out there, Dean?”

The older hunter was dumping holy water into the bone-deep claw marks that crossed Dean’s back, and the pain had him nearly breathless.  He pulled the self-imposed gag from his mouth.  “Gun jammed.”

“What?”  John’s voice had taken on a cutting edge.  “The 1911 _jammed_?”

Dean nodded.  John had finished rinsing the cuts with holy water, and Dean braced himself for the next step: peroxide.  

“That thing never jams.  Where is it?”

Dean gestured with his head.  “Counter.”

Cool liquid flowed over his skin, and Dean hissed at the immediate and sharp burn that it caused.

John retrieved the gun.

“When was the last time you cleaned this?”

“What?”  The agony in his back coupled with the horror of having killed his surrogate father had Dean’s brain wanting to go offline, and he was tempted to let it.

“I said your fucking pistol is _filthy_.  When was the last time you cleaned it?”

The burn was intensifying, the bubbling liquid feeling for all the world like it was boiling his flesh.  “I -- I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know_?”

Dean didn’t miss the danger in that tone, and he struggled to focus.  “Can’t remember.” _Hurts.  Can’t think._

“You know better, Dean." The man's voice was a strangled growl.  "Your weapon is your _life_ , and your carelessness or laziness or whatever the fuck it was, _that’s_ why it jammed. Why you had to _murder_ Bobby.”

Nausea and a horrified disbelief washed over him, and Dean choked on his sobs.  “Dad...I’m sorry.”

“I’ll tell you what: I sure as hell don’t want to have to touch you long enough to stitch these fucking wounds.  You make me sick.”

_When did I clean it last?  Why can’t I remember?  Doesn’t matter.  This is my fault.  Bobby’s dead and I shot him and it’s my fault._

John rummaged through Bobby’s cupboards, retrieving a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and poured it over Dean’s back liberally.  “I’ll just cauterize it.”

“Dad!  Stop!”  He’d thought the peroxide was bad, but this was worse, so much worse, and Dean writhed as he gripped the edges of the table with no idea how to escape the torment that was his own flesh.

Dean heard the flick of a lighter, and he was on fire, _literally_ on fire, an absolutely insane, unbearable amount of pain screaming through his body, the smell of roast pork and burnt hair, and he was shouting, rolling off the table and onto the floor, onto his back, trying to smother the flames, and it hurt, _oh god it hurts so fucking bad, please_ \--

He turned onto his stomach, chest heaving, fighting nausea as well as pain, and it still burned, burned so badly he couldn’t even tell if the flames were out, and his father’s boots were there, and he looked up, _like staring through a sheet of rain on a window_ , his eyes were so wet -- “Dad.  Please.”

John was holding his belt, and he brought it down across Dean’s charred and bloody flesh with as much strength as he could, each strike emphasizing a word: “Clean. Your. Fucking. Gun.”

It was too much, and as hard as Dean tried to stay still and be quiet, his body could not, and he twisted away, vomiting even as he screamed.

_I’m sorry.  Bobby, I’m sorry!  I don’t know why it wasn’t clean, I clean it after every shoot, I don’t know what happened, I’m sorry, I’m sorry--_

His nails split and frayed as he dug them into the rough surface of Bobby’s worn hardwood floor, his mind gone, body working on instinct to save itself from the horror that had befallen it.

 

John dropped the belt, grabbing a fistful of his son’s hair, lifting his head up, forcing Dean to look down the muzzle of his pistol.

 

“You see that, Dean?  That is what a clean gun looks like.  The people who rely on me won’t die because of a fucking misfire, because my goddamn weapon is _clean_.”

He used his grip on Dean’s hair to haul the young hunter into a sitting position.  He dropped his own pistol in Dean’s lap, then pulled the 1911 from his waistband.  “You see this?”  He pointed the barrel at Dean’s right eye, then pressed it brutally under the bridge of his nose.  “You _smell_ it?  It’s dirty, Dean!  And I haven’t even looked at the magazine yet!  Shells don’t load right, they don’t fire right, they don’t even fucking _fly_ right when a gun is as poorly cared for as this!”

He backhanded Dean with the pistol, opening up a fissure along his cheek.

_I didn’t clean it why didn’t I clean it I’m sorry Bobby sorry so sorry Bobby please forgive me_

And Dean knew that he couldn’t have actually been to Hell, he must have been confused about that earlier, because Hell was supposed to be the worst thing that could ever happen to you, and this, this was so much worse than anything he could ever remember.

 

A razor hit the floor in front of him.

 

“Who do you hate more right now, Dean?  Me, or yourself?”  A familiar boot toed the equally familiar blade, and the name ‘Alastair’ beat a pulse in Dean’s head.  “You can end this right now, boy.  Or it can keep going, day after day after day.  Your choice.”

Dean stared at the thin steel.   _Don’t do it. It’s a trick.  Don’t you dare pick up that fucking blade._

“I know you hate me right now, you miserable little fuck.  Such a sorry excuse for a hunter.  I’m ashamed to even tell people that you’re my son, you know that?  And I’m not done with this.  I’m going to kick the shit out of you, and after we burn Singer’s body, I will whip you until there’s no skin left to mark. You understand what I’m saying, Dean?  You are worthless and careless and a fucking disgrace.  Unless you pick up that blade and prove that you have the balls to come at me with it, you are no son of mine, and I am going to beat you to death like a fucking rabid dog --”

 

Dean picked up the pistol his father had dropped in his lap

 

And put a bullet in  his own brain.

 

* * *

 

Alastair sighed heavily, glaring at his companion.

_Well, that’s disgusting._

He had looked over just in time to catch the incubus ejaculating.

Alastair rolled his eyes.

“We’ll do it again tomorrow.  This time _I_ will figure out how to up the ante.”  Alastair spared the loathsome creature one more glance.  “Clean that mess up.”

 


	17. OF WOLF AND MAN 3

* * *

 

Dean woke to someone slapping his face and calling his name.

He scrambled backwards, hands up, eyes wild, stopping only when his shoulders and the back of his skull impacted something hard.

“Bobby?”

The gruff old hunter’s eyes were full of concern.  “Hey, kid.  How you feelin’?”

Dean looked around in confused panic.   _ Bobby’s guest room. Didn’t I just do this?   _ “Where’s Sam?”

“He’s off at college, remember?  We been keepin’ tabs on him.  He’s good; safe.  Got a girlfriend.”

Dean settled back onto the bed,  heart racing.   _ I knew he was going to say that.  I  _ remember _ him saying that.  What the hell is going on? _

“You alright, son?  That werewolf rung your bell pretty hard.”

He pressed a hand to his temple.  _  I have a concussion.  And we’re going after those wolves again tonight.  _  “Yeah.  ‘M okay.  Just need a minute.”

His brain was spinning.   _ He’s going to tell me that Dad is in Illinois. _

“Where’s Dad?”

“He went after those witches in Illinois, remember?  Left us to tackle the ‘wolves.”

Dean remembered that hunt.  Remembered getting hurt, hauling Bobby out of there.  But there was more.  _  Didn’t it all go sideways?  Didn’t Bobby get bitten?  Start to turn?  Didn’t I shoot Bobby?  Am I reliving this so I can do it over, save him?  _  “We didn’t get them….”

“No.”  He patted Dean’s leg.  “But we didn’t get dead, either.  We got two more nights ‘fore the moon gets too far from full.  If you’re feelin’ up to it, we’ll go back out tonight.”

“Yeah.  Okay.”  He squeezed his skull with both hands, willing the spinning thoughts and building terror to stop, or at least slow down.  “Are you okay, Bobby?  Not hurt?”

The older man chuckled.  “Take more than some pissant werewolf to damage a salty ol’ dog like me.  I’m jus’ fine.  Lemme get ya some aspirin.”

“Thanks, Bobby.”

 

* * *

 

As soon as the older man left, Dean got up, ignoring the mild dizziness and nausea that told him had a concussion.   _ It’s real.  I’ll touch the curtain and it will be real. I’ll touch the window and it will be real.  I'll look out and it will be Bobby’s yard, the tree and the cars and the dirt will all be there. _

He swallowed hard, turning away from the window.

He went into the bathroom.   _ There won’t be anything.  No blood, no torn clothes, because that part hasn’t happened yet.   _

_ And I’ll look in the mirror because I expect to see Hell staring back at me, and that won’t be there, either. _

_ But it feels as real as this.  Hell feels as real as this. _

Dean  moved to the sink as if compelled.  He leaned on the counter, staring into his face, searching his eyes.  As expected, there was no trace of trauma that he could find.  Nothing of the horror he remembered  was lurking in his eyes.

_ What the fuck? _

He looked around the room, remembering his next move.   _ Shower.  I shower next.   _

He examined his body as he lathered it.  _  All my old scars are still there.  Just like I knew they would be.  But I also thought they’d be gone, because I get a new body each day.  So if all of the other shit already happened, did Hell, too?  Did I go back in time?  What the fuck is going on? _

He showered until the water turned lukewarm.  _  I’ll go downstairs now, and there will be coffee, and bacon. _

 

* * *

  
Bobby turned, mug in one hand, full plate in the other.  “Have a seat, idjit.  Need ta build yer strength up if we’re goin’ after those ‘wolves tonight.”

Dean accepted Bobby’s offerings, trying to figure out how to ask...or _what_ to ask.  “Hey, Bobby.”

“Yeah?”  The older hunter was at the stove, filling his own plate.

“What...Um...What’s up with deja vu?  Is it a supernatural thing?”

Bobby settled into a chair across from Dean’s.  “Not that I know of.  Why do you ask?”

“What about time travel?  Is that a thing?  Or reliving the same day over and over again?”

Bobby set his fork down, giving Dean his full attention.  “What’s goin’ on?”

Dean took a sip of Bobby’s signature brew.   “This is awesome.” 

“Quit evading.  What’s going on?”

Dean sighed.  “I don’t know, Bobby.  I just feel like...like I’ve lived all of this before.  And more.”

Bobby waited.

Dean shifted uncomfortably.  “Like this hunt: I know we’re going out tonight.  I know we’re going to get hurt.”  He swallowed.  “I think you’re going to get shot.”

“Shot?”

“Yeah.  By me.”

Bobby leaned back, looking thoughtful.  “You’ve had an awful lot of concussions in yer life.  That might have somethin’ to do with it.”

Dean snorted.  “I really don’t think that’s it, Bobby.”

“Maybe it has something to do with those witches yer dad is after.”

“That makes more sense.  I fricken’ hate witches.”

Bobby chuckled.  “You finish yer breakfast. I’ll give him a call.”

“Thanks, Bobby.”  He lifted his mug.  “Coffee’s great, by the way.”

Concern and confusion flitted across the older man’s face, but he just smiled.  “No problem, son.  Most people hate my coffee.”  He patted the younger man’s shoulder on the way out.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“The witches are taken care of.  Yer pa’s on the way home.”

“What did he say about...my thing?”

“Said these ones weren’t much, but he thought maybe.  Hard to tell, ‘cause we got no idea how much mojo a thing like that takes.  He ain’t worried, though.  Says we need to go ahead with the hunt.”

Uneasiness stirred in Dean’s gut.  “Alright.  But if I say, ‘Bobby, behind you,’  _ move _ .  Got it?”

 

* * *

  
  


“Bobby! Behind you!”

The hunt had gone seriously south, and Dean had no time to retrieve his knife from the chest of the werewolf at his feet.  He drew his Colt, intending to nail the one coming up on Bobby right through its hairy chest --

His gun jammed.  

He stared at it in shock.   _ This has happened before.  I know it’s happened before.   _ He cleared the chamber and raised the gun to see the werewolf preparing to bury its fangs into the older hunter’s shoulder.

“Bobby!”  

With no clear shot of the creature available to him, Dean dropped to the ground, aiming at the lower left side of Bobby’s abdomen on an upward trajectory.  

 

His gun didn't jam a second time.

 

The werewolf dropped and Dean ran over, putting a bullet into the thing’s heart just to be certain it was dead.

Bobby stared at him, eyes wide.  “You _shot_ me!”

“I know. I’m sorry. It was about to bite you.”  Dean knelt in front of the older man, trying to pull his shirts out of the way to inspect the damage, and Bobby slapped at his hands.  

“Get off me, ya idjit.”

“You know I need to see, Bobby.  C’mon.”  Dean’s heart was racing, fear for his friend making his hands feel clumsy.

“I got this.”  Bobby shrugged out of his jacket and flannel, then gingerly peeled the hem of his undershirt up.

Blood soaked him from ribs to jeans.  _  Shit.  He’s bleeding way too much. _

“You bleed just fine.”  Dean removed his own already ruined shirts, tearing each into two pieces.  “One in front might’ve nicked your spleen.”  He folded half of his t-shirt into a pad and pressed it gently on that wound.  “The one in back is higher up.  Not bleeding much, so hopefully I missed all the good stuff.”  He pressed the second half of his shirt to it anyway, then used the larger flannel to tie both pads in place.  “How are you feeling?”   He regained his feet, shrugging into his coat.  

“Like I been shot, ya idjit!  How’d ya think I’m feelin’?”

Dean’s tension eased marginally.  _  He’s definitely still himself, at least. _

“You look worse’n I do."  Bobby continued to exercise his expertise in snark.  "How’re _you_ feelin’?”  

Dean looked down at the lacerations cutting across his ribs.  He was every bit as gory as the older hunter.  “Hospital?”

“With a bullet wound? You know better’n that.  Just get me home.”

 

* * *

  
  


“Dad. We need you.” Dean fought the blackness seeping into his mind, struggling to stay conscious long enough to get to safety. 

_ “What happened?”  _ There was no fear in the man's voice, just a suppressed irritation, and Dean's panic escalated.  _  He’s already angry, and I haven’t even told him _ \-- 

“Werewolves. And...I shot him..” Dean hated himself for the sob that escaped him. “I shot Bobby.” 

_ “Christ, Dean.” _ The irritation had escalated.  _  “Where? Is he alive? How bad is the bleeding?” _

“Left side.  Might be his spleen.  He’s bleedin’ pretty bad.  Passed out about five minutes ago.”  The blackness kept taunting him.  It was hard to breathe.  “The wolf was behind him, Dad.  It was going to turn him.  I had to take the shot.”

_ “Jesus Christ, Dean.  Thought I could trust you to hunt without me.  Dammit.” _

“Should I get him to a hospital?”

_ “With a bullet wound?  You know better than that.”   _ John’s disgust carried clearly across the cell phone connection. _ “Just get him home. I'm on the way.” _

The line went dead.  Dean dropped the phone, returning his bloody, shaking hand to the steering wheel.  Dread was building, and he didn't know why.

_ Just get him home. _

  
  


* * *

  
  


John was waiting for them when Dean pulled up.  He went straight to the passenger door, scanning Bobby quickly.  “Let’s get him inside.”

They carried the older hunter in, one Winchester under each arm, his boots dragging limply.  “Clear the table,” John demanded, and Dean complied, fighting off his own weakness and nausea, a prayer for his friend running as a constant background noise in his head.

They stretched Bobby out on the table.  John was in full Marine field medic mode.  “Get the first aid kit -- the big one.”  

When Dean returned John had stripped Bobby to the waist and tied him down to the table.  “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to transfuse him.  You’re going to go in there, figure out what’s bleeding, and get it to stop.”

Dean backed away from the table.  “Dad -- “

His father held out an old-fashioned straight razor, handle first.  “Take it, Dean.  You can’t give him any blood, you’ve lost too much.  And you’re the one who shot him, so you can be the one to fix him.”  He gestured impatiently with the blade.  “Come on, son.  Take it.”

“Alastair.”  The word was a horrified whisper.

“Jesus, Dean!  He’s dying!  Let’s get this done!”

“Alastair.”  Horror was giving way to rage.

“What the hell is that?  Some kind of curse?  Get your ass over here and take this blade!”

“No.  You're not my dad, you evil fucking prick.”

 

* * *

 

Suddenly their positions had changed, and Dean found himself in a situation that felt horrifyingly familiar: strapped down, stripped down, staring up at a pallid face and gleaming razor.

Bobby stood near his head, looking both shocked and nauseous.  

“It’s okay, Bobby.  No matter what you see, what you hear, it’s not real, you got it?”

“Dean -- “

“No! Just listen to me!”  The blade slicked down the center of his abdomen, and Dean ground his teeth, struggling to mask his reaction from his oldest friend.  “I died, remember?  My soul went to Hell. My _soul_ , Bobby, not my body.  This isn’t real!”

“Help me out, Bobby," John commanded. "He’s bleeding bad.”

Alastair had kept John’s face, John’s voice, and he reached into Dean’s abdomen with both hands.

Dean tensed, body trying to curl forward, a scream trapped desperately behind his teeth.

“I think it’s his spleen, Bobby.  I’ll hold it, you tie off the vessels.”

"It's not him, Bobby," Dean gasped out.  "That's not Dad."

Tears flowed down Bobby’s face.  He looked from John to Dean, clearly torn.

“It’s not real, Bobby.  I’ll be whole tomorrow.  This’ll be over soon.”  It’s all he could manage to grind out without losing the tight control he had on a rising scream.

“Come on, Bobby!" John's voice projected authority as well as rising panic. "We’re going to lose him!  Get over here!”

Dean felt a familiar tug, and hot liquid flowed over his skin.  

Bone deep cold followed, bringing a profound weakness.

His mind tried to leave, but he wouldn’t let it.  Not with Bobby falling apart beside him.

“‘S okay, Bobby.  I’m okay.”  He hoped his friend could hear him.

Bobby’s mouth hung open, and his eyes kept jumping from John's face to Dean’s to the mess of the young hunter’s abdomen and back again.  “Dean…”

“This is Hell, Bobby.  Alastair’s just fucking with me.  Be over soon.  I’m okay.  Be over soon.”  He wanted to say more, _needed_ to say more, but his lips tingled and his tongue felt numb and he couldn't catch his breath.

Bobby dropped to his knees.  “Dean.”  His voice was broken.

“Never mind.  I’ll do it myself.”  The John that wasn’t tore the vessels running into the hilus of Dean’s spleen, dropped the organ to the floor, and kicked it under the table.  “There.  Problem solved.  Let’s make sure the bullet missed his intestines.”

Horrified realization was creeping over Bobby's features.  The sight of it broke Dean's heart.

“I’m okay, Bobby.  Don’ watch.”  A sharp tug deep inside of him sent a bolt of agony up his spine, and Dean turned his head away from his friend, mouth open in a silent scream.

“Wow.  Did you know how many intestines a person has?”  John was drawing the glistening loops out, piling them on the table.

Dean began choking on his own vomit.

“Stop.”  Bobby was looking up at John, face wet.  “Please.  Just stop.”

Alastair-John held up his bloodied hands.  His features shifted, the illusion of John Winchester falling away.  “He’s just about done anyway, aren’t you Dean?”

The young hunter’s body was trembling and pale, the table and floor  having claimed the majority of his blood.

Alastair leaned close.  “Can you hear me, Dean?”

A low moan provided an answer.

“Did you enjoy your visit with your friend, Dean?”

“F-fuck you, Alastair.”  

“Look at him, Dean.”  Alastair turned his toy’s head, and Dean had no strength to resist him.  “I think we broke him.”  He stroked Dean’s cheek.  “He really loves you, doesn’t he?”

“I hate you.”  That passion was the only thing powering Dean's voice.

“You could end this, you know, Dean.  We’re torturing your friend here, breaking his poor, withered heart, and it’s _your_ fault.”

“Stop,” Bobby whispered, and Alastair waved his hand, silencing the older hunter.

“You could still fix this, Dean.  Take my blade, and I’ll make sure your friend remembers nothing.”

Eyes locked on Bobby’s, Dean ground out his last words: “Bobby’s tough, and I’m okay, so you can just go fuck yourself, Alastair.”

 

* * *

  
  


Bobby sat up, heart pounding, face wet.  A quick scan assured him that his room looked the same.  Nothing had changed since he’d gone to bed.  He glanced at the clock, startled at the realization that he’d only been asleep for an hour.

 

“Dean.”


	18. HIT THE LIGHTS I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you've been following this, I actually added a new chapter 11, which bumped everything after up another chapter. Confusing, eh? Yeah, I'm like that. ;P

* * *

 

“Lock the doors, the windows.  Close the shades.  Most important?”  

“Look out for Sammy.”

Dean followed his father to the door, locking the deadbolt behind him.

* * *

_ No no no.  This is done, this over, the shtriga’s gone, me and Sam ganked it!   _

The incubus crouched over Dean,  talons digging into his victim's skull.  It salivated as it manipulated the man's brain, feeding off of the angst pouring from the tortured soul strapped to Alastair's rack.

* * *

 

 

Dean looked in on his sleeping brother before slipping out the door, locking it behind him.  He just had to get away, even if it was only to play the same arcade game over and over again. _  It’s always about Sammy: keep Sammy safe, look out for Sammy, keep Sammy happy. _  He slammed another quarter into the slot of the machine.  _  I never get a break.  Nobody ever asks what I want.  I never get to be the most important one, the one everyone looks out for, tries to keep happy. I’m sick of it.  I wish I never had a little brother. _

The bartender kicked him out, and he trudged back to the motel room. 

Opened the door.

Crossed to the room.

Saw the shtriga perched over his little brother, sucking the life from him.

 

And smiled.

* * *

_ NO!  That’s not what happened!  I tried to kill it!  I picked up the shotgun!  I tried! _

The incubus moaned, savoring the man's delicious pain, his helpless desperation.

His guilt.

* * *

 

 

Dean heard a key in the door and scrambled for the shotgun, lifting, aiming --

John shoved him aside, his pistol raised, the shot deafening in the close space.

The shtriga screamed, flitting out the window.

John went to Sam, weeping over the child’s still form.

_His favorite child,_ young Dean thought bitterly.   _Now maybe it will be_ my _turn for once._

 

* * *

 

_ It’s not real.  That’s not what happened, not what I thought, not what I wanted to happen.  I loved Sammy, I always loved Sammy, I never felt that way! _

The incubus writhed ecstatically, phallus dripping.

* * *

 

 

John cradled the small boy to his chest, sobbing.  “Dean!  How did this happen?  Where were you?”

_Don’t tell him you were out!  He’ll murder you!_  “I was in  here, watching TV.  I never heard it!  I just got up to check, just in case, like I always do, and I saw it!”  He set the gun down.  Took a tentative step into the room.  “Should we...does he need to go to the hospital?”

There was a knock on the door, and the two froze.  “Hey, kid!”  The bartender’s voice carried through the door.  “You still awake?  You forgot your coat!”

John stared at his older son, death in his eyes.  “Watch your brother.  Stay with him this time.”  He eased the comatose child onto his back, brushing past Dean to open the motel room door.  “Can I help you?”

“Yeah.”  The man held up Dean’s jacket.  “Your son was over playing arcade games a few minutes ago.  He left this behind.”

“Thanks.  I appreciate it.”  He took the incriminating item, smiling warmly at the bartender as he closed and bolted the door.

He turned to Dean, who was watching him through the open bedroom door, eyes wide.

The coat dangled from one forefinger.

“Right here, watching TV,  huh?”

Dean swallowed.  “Dad...I’m sorry.”

John crossed the room, a panther closing the distance in anticipation of a kill.  “You’re sorry?  Your brother is dying right now, and you’re sorry?”

He had reached the bed, and he wrapped one hand around his older son’s throat, lifting him off the ground.   “You’re SORRY?”

He threw the child. 

Dean  hit the wall, stunned, and slid to the floor.

John paused to slip a pillow beneath Sam’s head, pulling the blankets up to his younger boy’s chin.

He turned to Dean, lifting him by the hair, and threw him toward the door.  “Get in the other room, boy.”

Dean scrambled, trying to rise, and boot caught him in the stomach, carrying him through the door.

He retched, wind blown from his lungs, and curled in on himself.  

He felt his father’s fist in his hair, the other gripping the waistband of his jeans, and he was airborne once more.

He hit the back of the cheap couch, ribs cracking under the impact with the thinly covered wooden frame.  He cried out, and John sneered.  “I’ll show you sorry, you worthless piece of shit.”  

John Winchester unbuckled his belt, pulling it from the loops.

 

* * *

 

_ No no no.  This isn’t what happened.  This never happened! _

But it felt real.  Every blow, every word, every tear: it felt real.

The incubus shuddered, belly bloated, phallus pulsing.

* * *

 

 

“Strip.  Now.”

Snot and tears ran down his face, and he still couldn’t breathe.  Even the slightest move sent shocks of agony through his ribs, and Dean sobbed, hands shaking, unable to comply.

John picked him up by the neck, snagging his fingers in the boy’s ragged t-shirt, tearing it from  his body.  “I gave you an order, Dean!”  He threw the boy to the ground, wrapping the tongue end of his belt around his fist.  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot: you’re Dean Winchester.  You don’t have to listen to my orders.”  The belt came down, buckle striking the boy’s bare shoulder, shredding the flesh.  “Don’t have to stay in when I tell you to.”  Another strike landed, this one across the boy’s already damaged ribs, and he screamed, rolling onto his stomach, arm pressed to his side.  “Don’t have to tell the truth.”  A third blow opened a furrow along his back.  “Don’t have to keep your brother safe.”  A fourth laceration appeared.  “Keep him alive!”  

Now the blows fell without pause, the enraged father following the young boy as he belly-crawled desperately across the floor, sobbing, vomiting, pleading.

He finally stopped, placing one large, booted foot on his son’s neck, pressing the child’s face into the grimy carpeting of the run-down motel.  “Get your pants off.  Now.”

The sobbing child struggled to obey, barely having the strength to lift his arms.

His father lost patience, pulling out a large Bowie knife.

He slid the tip beneath the waistband of the boy’s jeans, taking to pains to avoid flesh, and cut the cloth from the child’s body.

Dean screamed and thrashed, begging for mercy, for salvation.

 

No one heard.

 

* * *

_ Stop, Alastair.  Just stop.  My father didn’t do this.  He would never do this! _

The incubus cackled, hips pumping, acidic saliva draining onto his victim's chest, burning through the man's skin to the muscle beneath.

* * *

 

 

The unblemished skin of the boy’s lower body was in stark contrast to the battered pulp above his waist.

But not for long.

The boot stayed in place, and the child’s body bounced with each blow as the belt rained down mercilessly, transferring all of the father’s hatred and rage into the diminutive form.

 

* * *

 

“Would you like it to stop, Dean?”  Alastair’s sibilant murmur cut through the nightmare he was forcing his captive to live through.  “Or shall I allow your father to beat you to death?  Aren’t you curious to see what he’ll do with your body?  I know I am.”

“Fuck you, Alastair.”  Dean knew what saying that to this demon could mean for him, but at this point even an agonizing rape that ended with his body torn apart or melted from the inside out was preferable to horror of knowing that his brother was dying because of him, and watching his father, overcome by sorrow and rage, beat a younger version of Dean to death.

He couldn’t watch that.

But there were worse things even than this.

“I’m not taking up your blade, asshole.”

 

* * *

  
  


The beating stopped, leaving young Dean battered, bloody, yet somehow still conscious.

John left him sobbing on the floor to go check on Sam.  He returned with the younger boy, hidden within a swaddle of blankets, cradled in his arms.  He set the child gently on the couch, smoothing his hand over the child’s brow.  “You’re going to be okay, sweetheart.  Daddy’s got you.”

He turned abruptly to his older son, lifting Dean by the hair and one ankle.  He carried him into the room that Sam had occupied, dropping him onto the bed.  He crossed to the window, striking it with his elbow, shattering the glass.  He turned out the light, closing the door but not latching it.

“Come on, shtriga.  Come to Papa.”

  
  


Dean curled into a ball on his side, alternately sobbing and retching, nauseous but with nothing left for his stomach to offer.

He shivered as chill air from the broken window fanned across his naked body, wet with blood and the sweat brought on by extreme pain.

He prayed to a god he didn’t believe in to let his brother live.  To get his father to forgive him.  To take him away from his misery, his hopelessness, his shame.

 

When the shtriga came, it was an answer to his prayers.

 

He rolled onto his back, gasping at the renewed agony, and opened his arms, embracing his killer.

“Thank you.”

He faded into oblivion.

 

* * *

 

The incubus shuddered, talons digging deep, blood and brain matter oozing out around its matte black digits.  Its ejaculate coated the young man's torso, burning through flesh, acrid smoke rising in its wake.  
  
  


"Can we have your final answer, Dean?" Alastair brandished his favorite blade, turning it to catch the light.

 

"N-nooo..."

 

Another day, gone.


	19. HIT THE LIGHTS 2

* * *

 

“Lock the doors, the windows.  Close the shades.  Most important?”  

“Look out for Sammy.”

Dean followed his father to the door, locking the deadbolt behind him.

 

* * *

On the rack Dean moaned, and the incubus shivered, savoring the taste of its morning meal.

* * *

 

Dean reassured himself that Sam was truly asleep before letting himself out, locking the door behind him.  He strode into the bar as if he were accustomed to such places, trading a five dollar bill for quarters, and took up his position before the lone arcade game.

Hours later he had burned through an entire week’s worth of grocery money, and the bartender was escorting him out the door.  “Kid. We’re closing.  Don’t you have a home?  Parents?  What are you doin’ out so late, anyway?”

He hurries back to their room, throwing a glance over his shoulder to make sure the nosey bartender isn’t watching him.

He lets himself in.

Locks the door behind him.

Crosses the room, knowing before he reaches the bedroom that something is wrong, Sammy’s in trouble.

Sees a monster crouched over the limp form of his brother.

He lifts the shotgun.

The creature raises its head, turning dead eyes on him, and hisses.

Dean jerks, terror-spiked adrenaline crashing through him.

The gun goes off just as John bursts through the door, yelling, “Get out of the way!”

The shtriga vanishes.

Dean stares, horrified, at the blood welling out of the remnants of his brother’s chest.

John pushes past him, dropping to his knees, his tortured cry of “Sammy!” reverberating in the small space.

 

* * *

“No!”  The incubus held the man in a paralyzed state, talons piercing his scalp, abdomen swelling as it fed off of its victim’s horror, his pain, his guilt.  “I didn’t shoot him.  I never shot him!” But the incubus was in control, and Dean was forced to live this experience as if it were actually occurring.  “Sammy!  Sam!”

His tortured cry reverberated in the stone room.

* * *

 

“What have you done?”  John hugged the small body to his chest, tears mingling with the smeared blood on his cheeks.  “Dean, what have you done?”

“I...I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean--”

“You’re ‘sorry’?  You ‘didn’t mean’?”  John hugged his dead child, sobbing out his grief.  “Do you think that will make this better, Dean?  Do you?”

Dean took a step back, very carefully placing the shotgun next to the door, vowing to himself that he would never ever fire a gun again for as long as he lived.  “No.”  But he didn’t know what would make it better, and his horror and disbelief overwhelmed him, and the tears coursed down his cheeks.

 

John held his younger son, rocking the boy until his body cooled and his limbs began to stiffen.

Dean stood, a mute witness, wishing he were the one lying dead in his father’s arms.

“We have to --” John began, voice breaking.  “We have to...burn his body.”

Dean’s catatonia broke.  “Dad, no!  We can’t!  He’s my brother!”

“We  have to, Dean.  We have to.  If we don’t, he’ll come back and haunt you.  You killed him; he’ll want revenge.”

 

* * *

“No!  He wouldn’t!  Sammy wouldn’t!  He wouldn’t hate me!  He’d understand, he’d forgive me!”

_But he hasn’t,_ a voice deep in his soul whispered. _You left him alone topside, and he hasn’t forgiven you._

The incubus groaned its pleasure, phallus filling.

* * *

 

John directed, forcing his older son to wrap the younger’s corpse, to build a pyre, to salt the body.  He watched the older boy struggle to carry his brother’s cold, stiff body to the funeral site, helped him lift the dead child onto the pyre.  Made Dean pour gasoline over everything, made him strike the match and light the fire.  

Stood by while their little Sammy, their reason for being, went up in flames, just like his mother before him.

 

* * *

“No!  Sammy!”  Dean cried out in his child’s voice, grieving for his baby brother.

The incubus moaned, dripping its burning saliva onto the captive’s chest, melting holes into his flesh.

* * *

 

Back in their room, John pulled out a familiar bottle.  “Go to bed, Dean.”

“But...it’s bloody.”  And Sam’s bladder and bowels had let go in that bed.  Dean did not want to sleep in it.

“It’s your fault, Dean.  You shot him.  You killed your brother.  Now go lay down.”

Dean piled what blankets had not burned with his brother over the mess, curling up as far from it as possible.

He could smell it, nearly taste the iron and ammonia on his tongue, and he gagged through his tears.

He got up, crossing to the window, straining to push it all the way up.

“You can come back, shtriga.  No one will hurt you.  No one cares.”

He climbed back into bed, waiting, hoping.

But the shtriga never came.

 

Instead, morning dawned, and Dean stumbled out, bleary-eyed, confused, praying it wasn’t real, praying it had been a nightmare.

His father lay face-down on the couch, saliva tinged with vomit trickling from his open mouth, empty bottle of Jack Daniels clutched in his fist.

Dean thought about breakfast.  Remembered Sammy, the Lucky Charms, the Spaghettios.

He ran to the bathroom, vomiting bile into the commode.

The loud flush awakened the slumbering giant, and John pushed himself up.  “Sammy?  You okay?”

Dean came out, face pale, eyes hollow.  “It’s not Sammy, Dad.  It’s me.  Dean.”

John squinted. “Oh.  ‘S you.”  Disappointment melted his features.  “I forgot.  You killed him.  Sammy’s gone.”

He pushed himself into a sitting position, head cradled in his hands.  “Gotta make a plan.  Figure out what to do.”

Dean waited.

“Got a different fam’ly, in Minnesota.  Get rid of you, I can go to them.  Quit hunting.  Be a husband again.  A dad.”

 

* * *

Dean sobbed.  “No.  He wouldn’t say that.  Wouldn’t do that.  He wouldn’t send me away.”

The incubus moaned, rubbing its engorged phallus against its victim’s thigh.

* * *

 

A few days later a man came to the door.  John invited him in.

He bent to shake Dean’s hand.

His smile was thin, and it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Dad?”

“I’m not your dad anymore, Dean.  This man is.  You just be a good boy, do what he says, make him happy.  You’ll be fine, Dean.”

He handed the man Dean’s duffle bag.  The man in turn passed John a small backpack.  John opened it, lifted out a brick of bills, rifled it with his thumb, and smiled.  He shook the man’s hand.  “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Come on, Dean.  I have some people I’d like you to meet.”

His father turned his back as Dean followed the other man out the door.

 

* * *

“Stop!” Alastair demanded, irritation in his tone.

The incubus froze, body trembling as it leaked fluids, smoke rising from the body of its victim.

“You aren’t supposed to kill him until I ask the question, you brainless twit!”

The incubus smiled, displaying jagged edges of blackened teeth that gave off a nauseating odor.

“Dean,” Alastair called, and his toy moaned.

“Have you had enough?  Are you ready to take up my blade, be free of this horror, start having fun again?”

_What you do is not fun_ , but he lacked the strength to say it.  “Just let me die.”

“Is that a ‘yes’?  You die, are born again as a demon, and live happily ever after,” the Grand Torturer offered, every hopeful.

“No.  I live human, I die human.  Shove your blade up your ass, Alastair.”

The demon nodded to the incubus.  “He’s all yours.”


	20. JUMP IN THE FIRE 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alastair has enlisted the help of an Incubus to dig out Dean's worst memories and greatest fears, bringing the involved souls together for a re-enactment with a more tragic ending. This one is from "Born Under A Bad Sign", a time that was literally Hell-on-Earth for Dean.

* * *

 

He woke up on a groan. _Did somebody call my name?_

“Dean!”

 _Yep_.  Feminine hands tugged at him insistently.  The dull burn in his shoulder intensified, and his teeth chattered with cold.  Jo helped him into a sitting position, and his swallowed scream turned into a low growl as a white-hot agony shot from his shoulder to his gut, stirring a boiling nausea.

He just wanted to lay back down, maybe forever.

_Sam shot me._

* * *

 

It all came back:

_Jo tied up inside the bar. Sam begging Dean to kill him. Hide-and-seek in the warehouse._

_His brother’s dead  eyes over the barrel of his pistol.  Dean armed with nothing but a flask of holy water._

_A hard punch to his shoulder, not sure if it was a demon shove or a bullet. Falling. Icy water enveloping him._

_Forcing himself not to fight, to sink, hide from his demonic little brother’s view._

_Trying to swim, movement of his left arm shattering the blessed numbness brought on by the bone-solidifying cold, pain so bright and intense he almost lost his breath on a scream. Blackness threatening; mind telling him this time he should just give up, it’s a bad wound and he’s drowning, and his brother is possessed and killing hunters, there’s nothing left to live for, to fight for --_

_But demon-Sam is still up there, and so is Jo._

_Jo… ._

_The water is so cold, it feels like a vice is crushing his head, and he just wants to let go, no more pain or fear or loss, and Jo is tough, and now she knows that Sam is possessed.  She’ll be okay._

_But it’s Sammy, and the demon will ride him until there’s nothing left, and Dean would sell his soul to save his brother.  If he can find him, get Sam to Bobby’s, he knows they can exorcise that demon.  Get his little brother back._

_It’s not the first time Dean has been at odds with himself._

_Not the first time he’s fought for his life -- not for his sake, but because of Sam._

_So he allows his body to drop, uses his right arm to grip debris on the floor of the lake, feeling the incline, pulling himself upward, lungs screaming at him to breath, and he keeps going, releasing just a little air to ease the pressure, watching the bubbles rise,  following, and there’s wood under his fingers, but it’s slick: he can’t grip it.  He’s so close, and he pushes off, head breaking the surface, gasps in a breath, prays the demon doesn’t hear, right hand finding the edge of something solid, and he pulls himself up, wooden ramp, just a little farther, crawling but not, because he can’t lift his torso, he’s pushing with his feet, so cold except for the fire in his shoulder.  That’s spreading, consuming him, down to his fingertips, through his chest, up his neck, and when the inferno reaches his brain, he is gone._

* * *

 

“Where’s Sam?”  Because Sam was a threat, but Dean also needed to save him, and how was that for conflicted?

“I don’t know, but you’re soaking wet and cold as ice.  We need to get you inside.”  She stood, forcing him to rise with her.  “Come on.  I can’t carry you.”

He grunted, fighting an urge to cry, the combination of fear and pain, exhaustion and hopelessness threatening to unman him.

But he shoved it all down, because he was Dean fucking Winchester, and there was no time for self-pity.   _Suck it up, asshole.  You’ve got work to do.  People to save._

_Sam._

* * *

Whisky almost numbed him, and the shrieking agony of Jo’s inexperienced fumbling brought clarity to the incessant churning in his mind.  

When she paused long enough to allow him to breathe, he called Bobby.  “Sam’s possessed, and he’s out to murder hunters. I think he’s headed your way.   We need to exorcise him.”

“I’m on it.”

Bobby never failed him.

* * *

A light shone from the living room window.  Other than that, Bobby’s home was silent.  

Lifeless.

Dean crept up the porch steps, flask of holy water open and ready.  

The doorknob turned easily under his hand.  He slipped into the kitchen, deftly avoiding the loose areas in the floorboards, staying silent.

He wanted to call out, but fear for his old friend choked him, and he couldn't risk giving away his position until he knew where the demon was.

He flattened his back to the wall beside the entrance to the living room.  His head dipped around the door frame, pulling back almost immediately.

Sam was strapped to a chair in the middle of a Devil’s trap, but Dean had not seen Bobby.

He dropped low, pivoting until he was framed by the doorway, scanning the entire room.

No Bobby.

Demon-Sam moaned, head hanging.

Dean straightened, crossing to loom over the bound figure.

“Hey,” he barked, voice harsh, “where’s Bobby?”

Sam’s head snapped up, eyes black.  “You’ll see.”

Dean flew back, spine striking the edge of the door frame in a paralyzing crunch, lungs locking.

Sam stood, his smile genuine enough to break Dean’s heart.

He strode across the room, hand rising, sliding Dean up the wall until the two brothers were eye-to-eye.

Dean fought for consciousness, terrified at the numbness and paralysis spreading down from the center of his back.

Terrified for Bobby.

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” the demon chided.  He stood so close, Dean could taste the sulfur on his brother’s breath.  “You should have killed me when you had the chance. Now we are going to have so much fun together, torturing Bobby!”  He stroked Dean’s cheek.  “And then it will be your turn.  Always so tough, aren’t you, Dean?”  He tipped his head as if he were moving in for a kiss.  “So much for a little brother to live up to.  But I’ll make sure that Sam gets to see you weak.  Gets to hear you scream and beg -- right before you _die_.”  He pulled his head away.  A flick of his wrist sent Dean crashing into the opposite wall, and the broken hunter's world went black.

* * *

 

Hunter instincts kicked in before conscious awareness, and whatever hurt animal noises Dean may have been making abruptly ceased.  His conscious mind scrambled to unravel the signals and memories that flooded it -- _shoulder and back burn, lower body numb, can’t move, Sam, Jo -- Bobby._

Dean opened his eyes, taking in the rope around his chest, feeling the same coarse fibers biting into his wrists somewhere behind his back.

For a moment he was surprised to find that he was clothed.  That faded quickly, leaving him wondering why he had expected to be nude.

The floor beneath his feet was concrete.  The air was redolent with the smell of engine grease and sawdust.

_Bobby’s shop._

A quiet moan hovered in the silence.

Dean raised his head.  “Bobby?”

He closed his teeth immediately on the reflexively spoken word, praying to a god he didn’t believe in that he had not caught the demon’s attention.

The older man did not respond.

Dean scrutinized his friend, trying to assess the man's injuries.  

A clanking and rattling announced the return of the demon.  Dean kept his head up, intentionally drawing the Sam-thing’s gaze.

“Hey, big brother!  Nice to see you awake!”

Dean didn’t respond.  

Sam turned, waving his hands at the wheeled toolbox and an acetylene cutting torch rig he had brought with him.  “Look!  I found toys!”

Dean focused on keeping his breathing slow and even, refusing to think about all of the ways a demon might use those two objects.

“Since you’re awake, I guess I’ll start with you.  I’ll switch to Bobby as soon as your screams wake him up.”  Sam smiled as if he’d just announced that Dean would get first dibs at an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Then he turned to the tool chest, opening drawers and rummaging through the contents.

“Here we go.”  He held a pair of tin snips aloft.

Dean wanted to close his eyes, to will all of this away, but even that was too much weakness for a Winchester to show.

He clenched his jaw.

Demon-Sam stopped squarely in front of him, eyes gleaming with humor.  

“Sam,” Dean ground out, “I know you’re in there.  Remember Dad.  You can fight this.”

Sam threw his head back and laughed, a chest-deep rumble that brought tears to Dean’s eyes for both the novelty and _wrongness_ of it.

White teeth and deep dimples taunted Dean as the tin snips descended.  “I hope he does, Dean.  That will make this even _more_ fun.”

* * *

 

Despite his assumptions, the demon had not used its chosen tool to remove any of Dean’s body parts.

His clothing, yes, but so far his hide was still intact.

Sam dropped the tin snips in a drawer, returning to Dean with the torch in tow.

 _Fuck_ .  Dean limited  his outward reaction to a clenched jaw while his mind went into overdrive to smother his rising panic. _Fuckfuckfuckfuck_ fuck _!_

Sam fumbled with the tanks of oxygen and acetylene.  Dean watched, hoping that the demon wouldn’t be able to manipulate the complicated tool effectively.  

That hope faded as the distinct hiss of escaping gas breathed into the silence.  Sam flicked the spark igniter, and a wide, orange flame burst to life.

Dean watched, expression impassive, as the demon fiddled with the knobs on the torch, coning the fire down into a narrow white beam.

He  held it up, smiling triumphantly.  “What do you think, Dean?  Did I do it right?”

The young hunter did not respond.

Sam approached, eyes on his brother’s face.

The flame crept closer to the side of the bound man’s thigh.

Dean’s gaze remained steady, face expressionless.

The smell of burning hair rose to his nostrils, followed by acrid smoke, then the nauseating odor of scorched flesh.

Despite the rising panic in his chest, Dean didn’t so much as blink. _I can’t feel.  Holy_ fuck _, I can’t_ feel _it!_

Sam’s expectant grin faded, brow furrowing.  He moved the flame to his brother’s lower abdomen.

Dean clenched his jaw.  _That should hurt.  Why doesn't that hurt?_

The demon shifted the torch once more, dragging it down his victim’s ribs, leaving a trail of blistered flesh behind.

And earned not even a grunt for his troubles.

_Broken back...I have a broken back. How am I going to save Bobby now?  And Sam?_

Expecting nothing after so many failures, demon-Sam brushed the flame over the distinct curve of Dean’s deltoid.

The skin around the hunter’s eyes tightened and sweat beaded instantly on his brow.  The clenched jaw was accompanied by held breath.

Sam smiled, bringing the white cone of fire closer, dragging it down his brother’s arm.

_Not gonna scream. Gotta keep him away from Bobby._

_Son of a bitch, does that hurt!_

He closed his eyes.

The line of agony extended down his forearm.

Sweat appeared on his upper lip, pooled in the hollow of his throat, slicked his chest.

“You _will_ scream, Dean.  I guarantee it.”

Even when the torch was removed from his arm, Dean kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut, trying to convince himself that the burning torment was not nearly as bad as he had imagined it would be.

That almost worked.

Then fire seared his nipple, and a strangled whine slipped through locked teeth.

He felt the trembling start but held on, determined not to reward the sadistic creature inhabiting his brother's body, reminding himself that it would hurt less once the wound was deep enough.

By the time Sam removed the torch, Dean was dizzy from holding his breath for so long.

Deep lines of dissatisfaction marred the demon's forehead.  

For Dean, the intense misery was unrelenting.   _I didn’t scream.  Thank god, I didn’t scream._

Sam turned the torch of, disgusted.  He glowered at Dean.  “Now what am I going to do with  you?  Can’t take your eyes yet; I want you to see what I do to your friend.” He stroked his chin, face a thoughtful rictus.  “I could just take one.  And one ear drum, maybe.  Some teeth.”

“Leave him alone.”

 _Bobby_.

Glee lit the demon’s face.  It turned to the older hunter.  “You know what I discovered?”  He crossed the small space, standing beside Bobby so he could look at Dean as he talked.  “Burning a man with a broken spine is pretty useless until you get above the break.”

Dean saw horror wash over his surrogate father’s face, and tears rose in his own eyes.  “It’s okay, Bobby.  I’m gonna be fine.”

Sam laughed.  “No you’re not, Dean.  You could have been.  You had your chance to kill me, but you were too weak.  Too selfish.  Needed me alive so you wouldn’t feel so lonely.  So you’d have someone to boss around.”

“Sam -- the real Sam -- knows that isn’t true.  He’s my _brother_.  I love him, and I know we can beat you.”

Demon-Sam pulled his lips back in a soundless snarl.  “I don’t think so, Big Brother.”  He stepped to the tool chest, retrieving a small sledge hammer.  Mimicking a man with a bowling ball, he took two quick steps towards Bobby, swinging the sledge into the older man’s knee.  

The wet crunch of shattering bone was nearly drowned out by Bobby's scream.

“Stop!”  The intimidating roar that Dean had intended came out high-pitched and nearly frantic, having to work its way past the bile that had flooded the back of his throat.

Sam chuckled.  “Or what, Dean?  What are you going to do if I don’t?”  The hammer rose and fell, Bobby’s other leg collapsed, and the tough old hunter shouted once more.

Dean struggled frantically against his ropes, breath hissing out of him as agony sparked from his shoulder and back.

The demon flicked his wrist, and Dean’s restraints fell away, sending him face-first into cold concrete.

Sam bent over, hand on his knees, laughter rocking him.

Dean levered himself up onto his forearms, using them to drag his useless lower half along the floor.  His brutal glare beamed hatred at the demon before him.

Sam straightened, wiping his eyes.  “Oh, my father, you are so, _so_ pitiful, Dean!  You look like a mud puppy.  No, a merman!  A merman out of water, dragging himself back to the sea!”  He doubled over once more, overcome by his own deranged humor.

Dean reached the torch.

He pushed himself up on one hand, reaching for the nozzle of the cutting tool with the other.  

Sam’s laughter ceased.

The hammer met Dean’s jaw, throwing him five feet to land on his back, stunned.

“What a great idea,” the demon noted.  “Let’s see how good ol’ Bobby reacts to being burned.”

“No!”  Dean fought the rising blackness, desperate to save his friend.

 

A razor appeared, the handle brushing frantic fingers.

 

“You can end this, Dean.  Save Bobby from this nightmare.  Save your brother’s soul.  Just say the word, and the demon inside of him will be on the rack.  You’ll be whole, ready to exact your revenge.”  The voice was seductive, sibilant, breath warm on Dean’s ear.  “Take the razor, Dean.  Take it.”

Cold horror flooded the young hunter, quelling the insistent burn that consumed his body, muting the frantic screams that deafened his mind.  “Alastair.” _It’s not real. None of this is real.  I’m in hell, and he’s fucking with my head again._  “Shove it up your ass.”

“Is that your final answer, Dean?”

“It is, and always _will_ be, my final answer, fuckwad.  Go screw yourself.”

He covered his ears, his own mantra

 

_Not real be over soon_

 

too weak to mask imitation-Bobby’s screams as demon-Sam worked him over with the cutting torch. 

 _I_ _t's not Bobby!  Just a demon wearing his face!_   Yet each tortured howl blistered Dean's soul.

 

When the agonized cries finally ceased, Dean welcomed the onslaught of the heavy hammer, trusting it to wipe his conscience clean.

_Not real be over soon_

 

_Over soon._

* * *

 

“That was even less effective than yesterday’s session,” Alastair muttered, casting a dangerous glare at the salivating incubus crouched over the relatively dead hunter.  “Time to bring in the big guns.”

 

He snapped his fingers, and the scene changed.

 


	21. JUMP IN THE FIRE 2

* * *

 

Dean stood just inside the bar, gun leveled on his laughing brother.

Jo lay, broken and bleeding, on the floor at Sam’s feet.  

His pants were undone.

Hers were tangled around her boots.

“Sam.”  The name vibrated with misery, disbelief, and hopelessness.

“I told you to kill me, Dean!”  Sam threw his arms out wide.  “I can’t control it!  It’s like my brain is on fire!  I _begged_ you, but you _wouldn’t_ , and now look!”  He pointed at the motionless girl.  “Look at what you made me do!”

“Sammy.”  The gun wavered.

 

“Dean.”  The familiar notes of disgust and disappointment that so often tainted his name were like a lance through Dean’s soul.  “I thought I told you to kill him.”

“Dad?”  Decades of yearning devotion and crippling shame erupted from the cavern Dean had buried them in.

“I sold my soul so you could live, Dean.  I trusted you to take care of you brother, to kill him when the time came, and this is how you obey me?”  John waved a hand at the mess beside him.  “He killed Steve!  He _raped_ Jo!  And now, what?  You’re just going to stand there and let him _kill_ her, too?”

Dean quivered beneath the lash of his father’s tongue.

“I told him to kill me, Dad, but he wouldn’t do it,”  Sam whined.

John shook his head, face a mask of disgust.  “I know.  He’s weak.  I should have let him die.”

Dean’s arms were shaking.

He lowered the gun.

“I’m sorry, Dad.  I’m sorry.”  Tears blurred his vision.

Sam laughed.  “Look at him now!  Crying like a little princess because Daddy’s mad at him!”

John crossed the space between them in two long-legged strides, striking his older son across the face with a back-handed blow that snapped the younger man’s head back, staggering him.  He gripped a fistful of Dean’s hair, forcing his head up.  “Look at him!  Look at your brother!”  He shook his son like a dog with a rabbit.  “He’s a _demon_!  A murderous fucking _demon_!  Pure evil, with no hope of redemption!”  He pivoted until he was standing in front of his broken older son, hand still fisted at the back of his skull, forearm pressed against the boy’s smooth cheek.  

Dean saw the blow coming towards his left side.  Knew that he couldn’t avoid it.

Didn’t even try.

John's fist landed with the impact of a charging bull, shattering Dean’s jaw.

His knees buckled and his hands went slack, pistol thumping into the floor.

“Stand up!” John bellowed, lifting him by his scalp.  “This is _your_ mess, and by God, you _will_ clean it up!”

He flung his oldest forward by his hair, sending the man stumbling into a slide that ended at Sam’s feet.

 

_Jo._

 

Dean's face was inches from the girl's inert form.

He smelled blood and urine.

Fear and betrayal.

 

_Jo.  I’m sorry._

 

He was close enough that he should have been able to feel her heat.

Her breath.

The beating of her heart.

 

There was nothing.

 

He closed his eyes, willing the images of her last few moments out of his mind.

_Jo.  I'm sorry.  I'm so, so sorry._

Sam nudged her with the toe of his boot before kicking his brother over onto his back.  He squatted down, placing the tip of a large Bowie knife over the pulse beneath Dean’s jaw.  “She called out for you, you know.”  Sam shook his head, curling his lip.  “Called _your_ name, when _I_ was the one fucking her to death.”  He rolled his eyes.  “Doesn’t she know how _rude_ that is?”

Self-hatred and grief pounded out a rolling crescendo, crushing Dean’s chest, devouring his soul.  _Sammy_.   _Jo_.

“She was in love with you, you know.”  The tip of the blade moved down, point drilling with deliberate lassitude into the skin over Dean’s heart.  “Thought you were some big _hero_. Expected you to come riding in to save the day.”  

Dean fought the urge to cry out as the blade impaled him, knowing he deserved this.

This, and so much more.

John stood over him, watching Sam work.  “This wouldn’t have happened on _my_ watch, Dean.  I gave you a job! _One_ job!”  He squatted down, and their two faces filled Dean’s vision: Sam, pupils blown, mouth open, vibrating with lust as he watched his blade penetrate his brother;  John, enraged eyes hooded, lip twisted in loathing.  “I should have let you die.”

Dean closed his eyes, tears burning his skin.  “I’m sorry.”

“Then _do_ it, Dean!”  It was a barked command.  “Take the blade away and _kill_ him!”  He reared to his full height, over-shadowing both sons.  “Kill him, Dean!  Kill your brother!  Do it _now_!”

Dean felt the handle of a razor in his palm.

Tears blurred his vision, but it didn’t matter: he’d know that shaft anywhere.

 _Alastair_.

His arm quivered.

“ _Do_ it, Dean!  You know he deserves it!  He’ll _never_ stop killing!”

Sam’s face was lit with a nearly boyish glee as he continued to twist his knife, pressing it deeper into his brother’s chest.

“He’s a _demon_ , Dean!  You can’t save him!  No one can!  Now _kill_ him, son!  Just kill  him!”

Each sob drove Dean’s chest up to meet his brother’s blade, but he couldn’t stop them from coming.

“Sammy.” The name on his tongue tasted like a lifetime of unwashed despair.

“Yes, 'Sammy'!  He’s _your_ job, Dean!   _Your_ responsibility, and you let _this_ happen!” John waved a hand, encompassing the broken bottles, the overturned chairs, and Jo. “ Everything I warned you about!  You _knew_ , and you _still_ couldn’t kill him!"  He kicked a fractured  bottle, sending it skittering across the floor.  "You’re a coward!”

Dean sobbed.

Sammy cackled.

“You’re _weak_ , Dean!  Selfish and _weak_! You _disgust_ me!”  John paced away, pushing his hands through his hair, returning to drop to one knee, face inches from his son’s.  “You are a _disgrace_ , Dean.  A _coward_ and a fucking _disgrace_.”  He regained his feet, turning his back on the scene.  “You kill him, boy, or you’re no son of mine.”

“Kill me, Dean,” Sam lilted, and now the widest part of the blade was in him, grinding against Dean’s ribs as it progressed with agonizing deliberateness.  “Kill me, kill me, kill me,” the younger man sang, as if it were a nursery rhyme.  

A short, sharp cry escaped Dean’s lips as the tip of the knife penetrated the nerve-rich pleura lining his chest cavity.

John turned back, sneering down at his older son.  “For the first time in my life, I’m glad your mother’s gone, Dean.  She would be so disappointed in you.”  He spit in his older son’s face.  “ _She_ would have killed him, Dean.”  He folded his arms over his chest, visage contorting as if the very sight of his oldest child was making him nauseous.  “ _I_ would have killed him.   _Bobby_ would have killed him.   _Anyone_ else I chose would have killed him.  But not  _you_.”  He spit again, and Dean flinched away, struggling to hide his shame from the thing pretending to be his father.  “You’ve disgraced us both, Dean.  Disgraced the family name.”  He knelt beside Dean’s hand, curling his fingers around the handle still gripped in his older son’s fist.  “But you can redeem yourself, boy.  Prove that you’re a Winchester.  The blade’s right here in our hand.”  He lifted their entwined fists.  “I’ll help you.  Let’s _end_ this evil prick.  This monster.  This _freak_.”

Dean blinked away a blur of tears to meet his father’s eyes.

 

“No.”

 

He smiled as his little brother’s blade finally pierced his heart.

 


	22. Fight Fire With Fire

* * *

“What’ll it be today, Dean?”

After more than twenty years it was getting difficult to come up with anything witty for the ageless hunter to say.

And he was forgetting why it was important for him to do so.

“You’re the fucking tour guide here.  How about if you make some recommendations, there, Tattoo.”

Alastair lifted his eyebrows.  “A ‘Fantasy Island’ reference, Dean?  I didn’t think you were old enough.”

“Yeah, well...motel TV.  Unless you pony up for the pay-per-view, the selection ain’t exactly stellar.”

“Well, this is not something I ever would have come up with on my own, but I think I can work with it.”

He snapped his fingers.

 

* * *

  


Dean found himself strapped into a very small plane.  His hands automatically tightened on the armrests and he looked out the window, seeing nothing but blackness past the raindrops silvering the glass.

A warm hand squeezed his, and he jumped, startled.

“Cassie?”

She smiled, cheeks dimpling.  “Relax!  We’re almost there!”

But she had to shout to be heard over the combined noise of the engines and the storm, and he was not comforted.

Dean was seated directly behind the pilot.

The profile of the copilot was all too familiar.

_Dad was in the Marines, not the Air Force!_

As if he’d read Dean’s mind, John turned and winked.  “It’s no SeaCobra, but I can adapt.”

The back of Dean’s seat began to shake, and his grip tightened.

“Knock it off, ya idjit!” cut through the alarming din, and Dean snapped his head around.

Bobby was in the seat behind Cassie.

Dean twisted, straining to look behind him, confirming his suspicion:   _Sam_.  His little brother grinned back at him, perfectly aware of his brother's flying phobia, delighting in his distress.

_My favorite people, all in one place._

A flash of lightning lit the cabin and open cockpit through the window beside Bobby, and the pilot’s face was momentarily reflected in the windshield.

 _Alastair_.

Dean squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the feminine fingers that stroked the back of his hand.   _It’s not real.  Not real not real not real.  None of them are here.  It’s NOT. REAL._

He wasn’t at all surprised when the turbulence hit, causing the fragile aircraft to buck and thrash like a mechanical bull.

Dean fought to control his rising panic.

_We’ll go down, and I’ll have to choose who to save, and I won’t be able to save them all.  And I don’t even know if it’ll be water or land, sharks and drowning or injuries and fire, I can’t even plan --_

_IT’S. NOT. REAL._

His heart was racing, breathing so rapidly it was making him dizzy.

“It’s okay, honey!  We’ll be landing soon, and we are going to have such a great time!”  Cassie held out her left  hand, waggling her ring finger.  A large diamond mocked him with its cheerful reflection of the lightning that continued to target the plane.  “I’ll have an entire week to show you what to expect every night for the rest of our lives.”  She leaned across the narrow aisle, sliding her palm over his thigh to stroke him through his jeans.  Her breath was hot on his ear, her voice in a normal speaking range rather than a shout.  “Good thing you’re already bow-legged.  Maybe no one will notice when I fuck you raw.”

_Fan-fucking-tastic.  Now I have to save four people’s lives while dealing with a raging hard-on.  Awesome._

An explosion rocked the tiny aircraft, and her hand tightened on him painfully.

An orange glow colored her high cheekbones.  Fire glinted in her eyes.

Dean turned his head, already knowing what he would see. _Wing is on fire._

_Here we go._

 

Suddenly, his fear was gone.

 

* * *

 

Dean’s body remained relaxed as the plane plummeted, heading straight down.  Cassie screamed, John bellowed, and Sam called out a frantic, “Dean!”

He ignored it all.

_He’ll set me up in a no-win situation.  Make me choose between watching them all die or taking up his blade and rescuing everyone._

_But I have a third choice._

 

* * *

  


They hit water first.

Black liquid, hard and cold, that shattered the thick glass of the cabin windows, pouring in to the small space.

But instead of sinking, the light craft bounced, skipping along the surface like a stone until it hit solid ground and burst into flame.

 

* * *

 

 

_Scalding heat.  Blinding flames.  Smoke, demon-thick, choking him.  Masculine screams.  Cassie eerily silent.  Thick taste of diesel fuel in the air.  Metallic scent of vaporized blood._

“Dean!  Help them!”  John Winchester, giving orders.

“Dean!  Sam’s in trouble!”  Bobby’s frightened growl.

Cassie limp, blood trickling from a cut on her temple.

A pained moan from Sam.

Alastair leans around his seat to smirk at Dean.  Flames dance along the blade that he holds aloft.

Dean looks around calmly, ignoring it all.

Fire licks at the open door between Dean’s seat and the cockpit.

Dean unbuckles his seat belt.  

Pushes himself to his feet.

Steps out the door, and is immediately engulfed in flames.

_Finally gettin’ my hunter’s funeral._

 

* * *

  
  
Alastair stood in the fire with him, laughing.  “So predictable, my dear boy!”  He shook a long, bony finger at the hunter.  “But you forget, Dean: this is Hellfire.  It burns for eternity.”  He turned to walk away, calling over his shoulder, “Let me know when you’ve had enough.”

 

* * *

 

 

Dean was back in the cabin.  

John struggled  to free himself from his seat.  

Flames crept up his pant legs, reflecting off the sweat slicking his face.  His motions became more frantic.  He gritted his teeth, fighting back a scream.

As the fire reached his thighs, self-preservation won out.  “DEAN!”

_It’s not real.  Not real._

But he couldn’t stop himself.

Dean’s boot knife was there, and he pulled it, rushing to cut his father free.

The blade was inexplicably dull, and he sawed frantically at the thick strap while his father’s shrieks sliced through him.

 

A new voice reached him.  “Dean!  Help me, please!”

 _Cassie_.

He glanced back.

She cradled her left arm to her chest.

The hand she had displayed so proudly was gone.

_‘S not real not real not real_

 

“Dean!  God, DEAN!”  John was writhing, skin from mid-thigh and lower black, and Dean could hear the sizzle and pop as the flames ate their way higher.

The seatbelt finally parted, and Dean hauled his crying patriarch from his seat, laying him on the floor in the cabin.  He draped his torso over his father’s in what turned out to be a vain attempt to smother the flames.

“It’s Hellfire, Dean,” Alastair lisped, his quiet tones somehow cutting through the chaos to reach is victim.  “You can’t put it out.”

 

“Dean!”  Cassie was sobbing, and the stump of her left wrist bled freely.

He pushed away from his father with a tortured cry.

 

John caught his pant leg with one hand, tugging desperately as he howled out his agony.  “Dean!”

 

Over Cassie’s seat Dean saw Bobby, eyes wide, hand slapping weakly at a piece of metal that pierced his chest, pinning the older man to his seat.

 

Dean turned to Sam just in time to see his little brother’s hair catch fire, lighting up like a halo.

“Sam!”

_Not real not real not real None of this is REAL!_

 

He pulled off his belt, tightening it around Cassie’s bicep, ignoring her cry of pain.

 

Moving to Bobby, he ignored the man’s pleading eyes while he plundered the old hunter’s jacket, withdrawing a flask of holy water.  He poured that over Sam’s head, cringing as his brother’s shrieks rose in pitch and volume, nearly crying in relief as the flames receded.

“I’ll be right back, Bobby!”

He knew there was nothing he could do for his old friend.

 

He returned to John, thinking to use some holy water on him, finding his father convulsing, eyes rolled back in his head, body nothing but ash-covered bones from toes to waist.

 

_Too late._

 

Cassie’s hemorrhaging had not slowed.  Her face was pale and drawn in the flickering light.

 

Dean returned to Sam, plunging his hand into the flames creeping up the back of his brother’s seat.  He had tucked the flask into an inside coat pocket, exchanging it for his boot knife.  He sawed desperately at Sam’s seatbelt, freeing him.  “See if you can help Bobby!”

He grimaced against the burn in his palm, agony threatening to overwhelm reason.

 

He moved back to Cassie.  “This is going to hurt!”  He wrapped his melting palm over her severed wrist, cauterizing the wound.

She shrieked, thrashing wildly against her restraints, clawing his face with her good hand as she tried to force him away from her.  He pulled back, watching the flames eat away at her flesh until he was satisfied that the bleeding had stopped.  Then he removed the flask from his pocket, emptying it onto her wound, bringing fresh screams to her lips.  

 

He threw the empty flask away and dropped to his knees, searching his father’s smoking corpse for a similar item.

He was nearly crying with pain himself, but he held the flask close, returning to his brother and their friend, making certain that the precious liquid was not needed elsewhere.

His fingers had burned down to bone, and the pain had only intensified.

“He’s bleeding out, Dean!  What do we do?”  Sam’s anxious eyes met Dean’s, trusting his brother to have a solution, to work a miracle.

 

Dean opened his mouth to speak, and an explosion rocked them, sending a ball of fire rolling over the three men.

Dean emptied the flask over his brother’s head, tears steaming on his cheeks as Sam’s horrified screams lacerated Dean’s soul.  

He dropped the empty flask.  “Sam!  Holy water!  Where’s your flask?”  But the younger man was thrashing, mindless in his agony, and he didn’t hear.  Dean tried to pat him down, ignoring his own distress as fire engulfed him as well.

 

Sam flailed wildly, shrieking his brother’s name over again and again.

 

Cassie called to him between sobs.

 

Bobby moaned, and as Dean turned to him, he saw the older man’s eyes explode, dripping gore down his cheeks.

 

_No no no no no_

 

* * *

 

Alastair appeared, standing untouched amid the flames.  He held up his razor.  “It’s nice and sharp, Dean.  You could put them out of their misery.”

“No!”  His roar rivaled that of the chaos around him.

 

* * *

 

Dean dropped to his knees, covering both ears with his hands, rocking.

Searing pain consumed him as the fire ate away his clothing, licking at his skin with a barbed tongue.

He could still hear their screams, feel his brother’s hands tugging at him as the younger man begged him for help.

Dean scrambled backwards in a crab crawl, wedging himself between two seats.

He wrapped blister-coated arms over his seared and hairless skull.

_Not real not real over soon not real_

 

And somehow they were all there: John, Cassie, Bobby.  Sam.  

They leaned over the seats, melted flesh dropping down onto him, screaming, begging Dean to save them.

_Not real over soon not real not real not real_

The seats melted away.

Their bodies dropped onto him.

They were being consumed: hair, eyes, lips, fingers.

And still they shrieked, they cried, they pleaded with him, with _Dean_ , to save them.

 

And his own mind screamed, the pain stripping away his sanity, fire down to his bones, and it wasn’t supposed to hurt so bad once it got through that layer of nerves in the skin, but this was Hellfire, and it had its own rules, and his body howled at him, begging him to save himself.

 

But he couldn’t.  

 

Couldn’t save Cassie.

Or Bobby.

Or his father.

Or Sam.

 

And even if he could have saved himself, he wouldn’t, because he couldn’t live with that: saving himself, leaving them all to burn.

 

He drove his head backwards, slamming it into the wall behind him repeatedly, crushing his own skull.

Fire rushed in through the fractures.

Dean screamed as the agony exploded inside his brain, his own voice reverberating inside his head, drowning out the faces and voices of the ones he loved until he crumbled to ash, and was no more.

  



	23. Damage Inc, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean runs into some old friends.
> 
> You know: that's a lie. This one is really, really bad. Even for me, and that's saying something.
> 
> So... er...enjoy? Read at your own risk? Have a vomit bucket handy? All of the above, I think.

* * *

 

 

Dean huffed out pained, nearly frantic breaths, head rolling on his shoulders as he fought back nausea-inducing dizziness in effort to clear his brain.

Before he was able to force his eyes open, his other senses kicked in.

 

_Blood drying on my forehead.  Explains the massive headache._

_What is that_ smell _?  It’s like shit and armpits and unwashed socks and…_

_Rotten teeth._

_Decomposing bodies._

 

His movements stilled, the need to remain unnoticed over-riding his urgency to move.

He had recognized the odor: _Benders_.

Dean went limp, allowing his eyes to open to the merest slits as he processed as much information as he could about his surroundings.

Heard the cheery crackle of a fire behind him.  Hoped it was the same fireplace that had been there before, not Hellfire creeping up on him.

Felt coarse rope abrading his wrists and ankles.

Realized that the hard wood of the chair beneath him had been warmed by his ass at the same time that he became aware of a chilling yet not unexpected fact:

He was naked.

 

_Of course.  Alastair likes me best that way._

 

The rank odor of rotting teeth and shit wafted away, then back, and Dean knew that one of the loathsome Benders had moved somewhere near him.

“Might’s well jist open yer eyes, there, boy. Not like yer foolin’ anyone.”

Dean raised his head slowly, making no effort to hide his hatred and disgust.  He looked around, noting that even little Missy was present, and wondered if she was real.  “It’s not that I’m surprised to see you sick fucks here,” he began, and he swore he could taste their rankness on his tongue, “I’m just surprised that it took so long for Alastair to let you at me.”

The oldest Bender chuckled.  “Well, we had ta earn it, I’ll tell ya that much.”  He smiled, and Dean noted that the man’s teeth looked even worse than they had topside.  “Not that we minded, a’ course. It’s the kinda work we’uns enjoy.” He chuckled the same low, malicious laugh that had turned Dean’s stomach the first the time they met.

It was no better now.

 

_Gonna be bad.  Gonna be real, real bad._

 

“We got a game to play.”  The Bender patriarch leaned into Dean’s personal space.

Dean gagged.  “Of course you do,” he growled, mouth wet.  “Too bad it doesn’t involve hot water and about three gallons of scented body wash.”

The old man cackled, head thrown back, mouth open, and the site of those blackened teeth brought the acid taste of vomit into the back of Dean’s throat.  “You gotta lotta fight left in ya, boy, I’ll give ya that!” He put his hands on his hips, the motion carrying a fresh onslaught of armpit sweat and drying feces to Dean's nostrils.

 

_I really am going to vomit before this is all over._

 

“Tha’s why this time we’re gonna hunt ya.”

“Right.  Give me a weapon and a fair chance.  Sure you are.” He rolled his eyes, and Jared stepped forward to backhand  him.

The dull throb of the blow bothered him less than the return of the debilitating dizziness that he had awakened with, and Dean groaned, breathing hard to keep his stomach contents in place.

His vision cleared to the site of a glowing fireplace poker held inches from his left eye.

“Couldn’t come up with something more original?”

A hand fisted in the hair at the back of his scalp as the weapon jabbed forward, and Dean’s mind went blank as the most intense agony he’d experienced thus far consumed him, nausea and odors and fear and hate and everything gone, no words, no thoughts, didn’t hear himself shriek or feel his body convulse.  Every crevice of his soul was occupied by a pure and singular entity: pain.

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing Dean became aware of as the agony died from indescribable to a horrifying, burning, stabbing misery was that he was screaming.  He heard the sounds, high-pitched and hysterical, but didn’t realize he was making them until they had scraped his vocal folds raw, roughening the noise and lowering the pitch.

He clenched his teeth, hating himself for giving them the satisfaction of seeing his pain, and struggled to control his breathing.

 

_Burns burns still burns oh god it fucking burns_

 

He couldn’t tell if the liquid on his face was blood or tears or whatever is inside an eyeball.

Decided he was better off not knowing.

A movement of air chilled the skin of his chest, and Dean realized that he was coated with sweat.

Beneath that, his body shuddered, a continuous wave of bone-deep paroxysms that he recognized as a sign of shock, a response to extreme pain.

Like the vomit he also smelled drying on his chest, along with the acrid stink of terror in the tackiness of  his sweat. _That’s what Dad told me: real bad pain makes you shake and sweat and puke._

He’d done all of that.

He wrinkled his nose as a new odor assaulted him. _Think I pissed myself, too_.

_That hasn’t happened since Allie fuckin’ vivisected me._

He kept his eyes closed and his head down, listening to the harsh sound of his breath as it huffed out onto his chest, feeling the tears flow in a steady stream as his body tried in vain to wash that eye clean.

 

_Burns burns   burns so fucking bad_

 

He couldn’t wait for this day to end, to the point that he didn’t care how, as long as it was quick.

He should have known better.

 

* * *

 

“First things first,” Pa Bender began, tossing the hot iron toward the hearth. “We gotta make sure ya got plenty of incentive to do yer best to git away from us.”  He turned to his sons, and the merriment in his smirk was not enough to disguise the sadism. “Which one a’ you wants first crack at tenderizin’ this meat?”

The two younger men exchanged a glance, and Jared palmed his crotch.  “Couldn’t we take ‘im at the same time, Pa?”

 

_No.  No no nonononono._

 

Dean was careful to keep his reaction hidden.

The eldest Bender chuckled, and Dean felt his entire body grow cold at the man’s words: “Now that is an excellent idea.  Go ahead, boys. Have at ‘im.”

 

* * *

 

Dean had started fighting as soon as they freed him, knowing there was no way he could win -- this was Hell, and the ending here was a foregone conclusion -- but unable to bring himself to just lie back and take what he knew they were going to deliver.

So when they cut the rope that tethered his bound wrists to the back of the chair, he stayed loose and still.  And when they cut his left ankle free, he chose not to react.

But as soon as the rope around his right leg gave way, he kicked out, knocking the man holding that knife halfway across the room, immediately exploding to his feet to drive into the other brother with a shoulder to the abdomen, launching the side of his bladed foot at the patriarch’s skull, connecting with a satisfying crunch of bone and the sight of the psychotic pervert’s eyes rolling back in his head.

And then Lee recovered and dove at him while Jared tried to lock an arm around his throat, and Dean, handicapped as he was by having his hands still bound behind him, still brought every resource he had into play, kicking and kneeing, head-butting and biting, writhing and twisting as he snarled his fury at this god-forsaken world he had somehow chosen to become mired in.

 

The battle ended with him kneeling on the floor, blood clogging his flattened nose, sliding in fat drops from his split lips and the charred remains of the distracting misery that was his left eye.

He ran the tip of his tongue over jagged teeth, feeling them rock in their sockets, and hoped that one of the boys would make the mistake of trying to force Dean to suck his cock.   _Can’t wait to hear the asshole scream when these broken teeth tear him apart._

Then the older one stepped into his personal space, the stench of the man permeating Dean’s senses, and he changed his mind, wanting no part of that unwashed flesh anywhere near his mouth.

He rolled a swelling right eye up at Pa as the man came forward with a length of rope.  “Don’t expect ya t’ be real cooperative for this, so we aim to do it the easy way.”

Dean sat down hard on his heels, grit he didn’t try too hard to identify digging into the skin over his shins as he ground them into the hard floor.  A vivid memory of being elaborately bound, calves to his thighs, knees spread, and hung from the ceiling clung determinedly to the forefront of his brain.

Along with all of the things that had been done to him afterwards.

 

_No way is he getting that rope around my thighs._

 

The man just chuckled.  “Sure do like it when ya fight, boy.”

Too late Dean felt the movement of one of the other men behind him and tried to twist away.  The kick that had been aimed at his kidney struck his lowest rib instead, and electric agony arched through him, knocking the breath from his lungs as the thin bone fractured under the blow.

Before he had a chance to react more strikes rained down on his body, this time coming from both sons, and he fell to his side, curling in to protect his abdomen while rolling from left to right and back again, lashing out with his feet.

Pa lassoed one ankle, holding on with an unnatural strength as he cackled and whooped, “Git ‘im, boys!” the only phrase that registered in Dean’s panicked mind.

When he felt the rope tighten around his other ankle --

 

_hands circle Dean’s ankles like talons and they pull and he fights and something tears in his leg and he panics_

 

his humanity deserted him and he went wild, bucking and howling and thrashing, curling up to try to bite, and he was so incensed that red foam coated his mouth and they had to drag him across the floor to stay away as he jerked forward to lunge at them, strikes to the face and head barely slowing him, until they ended up in the kitchen, one leg and one Bender on either side of the table, sharp edges of squared wood digging painfully into the meat of his thighs, and Dean was crying with rage and terror and frustration, still fighting, torso bucking frantically, but he couldn't reach them --

Pa dropped a loop around the crazed hunter’s neck, pulling it tight, and still Dean fought --

Until even the choked sounds were cut off, and his eyes rolled back, body limp.

 

“Bring ‘is legs up,” the patriarch directed.  “I’ll keep this tight so he don’t wake up.”

Lee and Jared did as they were told, pulling the unconscious man’s heels to his seat --

 

And Dean lashed out, kicking hard at his attackers.

 

_Don’t need to breathe in Hell, mother fuckers!_

 

But the lack of oxygen weakened him, and the ropes around his neck and ankles and wrists provided his captors with too much control, and the oldest Bender looped his cordage around a thick ceiling beam, hauling the struggling man off the ground, tying him off before producing more bindings. He passed one loop around the back of Dean’s thighs while the two Bender sons held their ropes taught, their victim's face purple from a lack of blood flow, and while not breathing won’t kill him, cutting off his blood flow can, and Dean continued to fight, increasing the pressure around his carotid arteries, hoping, praying --

 

_Break my neck so I can’t feel what they do or let me die, I don’t care which, need this to end, end now --_

 

* * *

 

 

And the scene changed.  He was back in the stone room, strapped to the rack, a salivating incubus perched on his chest.  Alastair smiled down at him, that feral sadism that is his hallmark nakedly apparent. A razor glinted in the dull candle light, and Hell's Grand Torturer raised an eyebrow.  “This could all end right now, Dean, just as you’ve asked. All you have to do is take up my blade. I’ll let you choose which Bender will be your first soul.” He rested the ball of his thumb against the ruined remains of Dean’s left eye socket, and the smoldering embers there burst into full flame, but the rope was still bruisingly tight around his neck, and Dean couldn’t even scream.

Alastair chuckled, touching the coarse fibers, and they loosened.

Dean sucked in a whistling breath, chest expanding painfully, and coughed razor blades through his crushed windpipe.

“So, what’ll it be, Dean-o?”  Alastair inquired, icy fingers trailing possessively across the skin of his toy’s chest.  “Have your way with a Bender, slicing the meat from his vary bones, or letting two of them bone you at once?” He licked his lips, salivating at the thought of the second option.  “Which will it be?”

“Not -- “ Dean wheezed, struggling to force uncontrollable hacking into words, “taking.  Blade.”

Alastair patted him on the head like he would a precocious toddler.  “Alright then, Dean. Have it your way.” He started to turn away, then changed his mind.  “I hope they don’t ruin that tight ass for me.”

He snapped his fingers.

 

* * *

 

Dean was on the floor, rope around his neck still looped over the rafter, but now his ankles had been secured to the tops of his thighs which were then tied snug against his chest, opening him up, with Lee and Jared in front of him, dicks waving in his face, and he knew there was nothing more he could do, it was going to happen and he’d done all he could so there was no shame in it, shouldn’t be anyway, but somehow there still was, every time someone forced their dick in his ass there was, because that wasn’t him, wasn’t what he wanted, and he was a  hunter, it shouldn’t happen if he didn’t want it, and that was the shame, that he wasn’t strong enough or smart enough or good enough to stop it --

 

The train of thought derailed as he was lifted into the air by his neck.

 

The Bender boys arranged themselves on their backs beneath him, lying head-to-toe with their legs intertwined, pressing their erections together, and their father was lowering Dean, face intent on his work, and they were guiding him --

At the last minute Dean fought, jerking his body erratically -- _away get away don’t touch me get away_ \-- and he hoped his neck would break or the rope would saw through, cutting his head off, he didn’t care which, but this had to end --

Strong fingers gripped his thighs, nails like talons digging into his flesh, and he couldn’t stop them, it was happening --

Pressure against his stretched and exposed flesh

 

 _Can’t be worse than Alastair with that monstrosity he conjures for himself,_ a last-ditch effort on Dean's part to control his pain and his terror --

 

But it was: worse than Alastair, worse than his eye, a blinding, all-consuming agony of tearing and bludgeoning that drove his soul from his body, and he floated somewhere near the ceiling, watching the eldest Bender’s arms pump as he raised and lowered Dean’s body furiously, seeing the men’s faces twisted into grimaces of bliss and concentration, watching the blood and shit and god only knows what flowing out of him, over them, until they shouted out their completion, first Jared, then Lee --

 

And Pa let go of the rope.

Dean’s body fell to the floor, lifeless.

 


	24. Damage Inc, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mystery, this one's for you! Enjoy!

* * *

 

 

When he hit the floor his soul saw fit to return to his body.

 

Not the choice Dean himself would have made, but nobody asked  him.

 

The rope around his neck had not loosened when he fell.  He lay curled in a fetal position, neurons signalling pain and discomfort going unheeded as his lungs shrieked in panicked desperation for oxygen.

 _Don’t need it in Hell,_ he would have told himself to calm that hysterical voice, but there was something wrong with his head.  He couldn’t form a coherent thought; couldn’t hold onto anything for long.

Sharp nails fumbled at his neck, and suddenly air rushed over his tongue, scraping like sandpaper as it tore down his throat.

He coughed, and bright misery sparked as panic receded, replacing the fog in his mind with the smothering weight of unadulterated pain.

It held him for a moment, suspended in time, cut off from the world. From  himself. There was no internal assessment as to what hurt or how badly or why or whether it was getting worse or abating, no attempt to fight or flee, no frantic need to examine each piece of sensory information that could be garnered in an attempt to save this doomed vessel.

 

For that moment, Dean Winchester _was_ pain, would always _be_ pain.  Nothing more, nothing less.

 

Ice water rained down on him, and the purity was shattered as Dean’s body instinctively reacted, drawing a sharp gasp from him as he flinched away from the shock of this new torment.

With it came a rush of information, sensory overload that made the man dizzy:

 

_Hard floor_

_Cold_

_Aching shoulder and hip where I landed_

_Burning_

_Burning everywhere --_

_Eye_

_Ass_

_Throat_

_Neck_

 

And throbbing where it didn’t burn.

 

Pa Bender leaned over him, and the now-familiar scent was too much for a stomach already rebelling against so many things.

Dean vomited explosively, curling in on himself as certain agonies intensified from dull aches to electric stabbing, and he was too exhausted, to broken, to even cry at the hopelessness of it all.

“I’m guessin’ ya ain’t gonna wanna repeat _that_ any time soon.  Am ah right?”

The words washed over him, unhelpful, thus unheeded, and the broken man did not answer.

Something touched the glowing horror that was his asshole, and Dean shrieked, arching his back as he scrambled ineffectually to get away.

“I ast’d you a question, boy!”

The object was removed, and Dean fell back, whimpering.  Hating himself for it.

 

_What did he ask?  Didn’t hear don’t touch me please didn’t hear sorry sorry I’ll answer just ask again please don’t touch me anymore --_

 

The older man chuckled, satisfied.

 

 _Did I say all that out loud?_  Shame cramped his gut, spread unwanted warmth up his chest to color his face.

 

“You put up a good fight for us, make this an excitin’ hunt, and I promise we’ll kill ya quick.  Even leave yer ass alone -- least 'til yer dead.  How’s that fer a fair deal?”

 

 _Answer, Dean, answer, he’s gonna do something to you if you don’t answer_ \-- “‘Kay.”

 

He wanted to say more, respond with something witty or snarky, make up for the whimpering and pleading he’d done, but he couldn’t think of anything --

 

 _You  could if you wanted, but you don’t want to.  You’re afraid to make him angry_ \--

 

He was just so tired, and so much still hurt, and now they were going to hunt him, and he should be thinking about that, planning, but he wanted to die, wanted this day to be over, so maybe he should just lay here, but then they might...they might do this again, and he couldn’t….not that.  

He’d have to try.  To fight. To run. To hide. To kill them before they got to him.  Before they did this to him again.

 

He’d try.

 

* * *

  


_Ten minutes._

 

That’s how much time they’d given him before the hunt started.

 

_Ten minutes._

 

In another time, another place, ten minutes would have been more than enough for Dean Winchester.  In ten minutes he could have found and rescued the civilians, set booby traps, and arranged an ambush.

 

Ten minutes was a long time to a seasoned hunter like Dean.

 

A lifetime.

 

 

He counted the seconds, choking back his misery as he forced ravaged hips through the tight circle of his bound limbs, bile coating his throat as be brought the knotted rope to his aching teeth, trying not to think about what bodily fluids the fibers had collected as he dragged them across the screaming destruction of his ass.

Fresh blood washed the feculent, semen and hemorrhage-mingled fluid from his mouth as loosened teeth gave up their fight to stay seated in his battered gums.

 

_Nine minutes._

Dean freed his hands.

 

Getting to his feet was another matter, and he lost track of time, lost track of everything, as the motion required to raise his body sent shockwaves of unbearable agony through him, like that hot poker was being forced up his ass, through his guts, into his chest, and he collapsed onto the table, clinging to the edges tightly as his legs shook and the room spun and his soul tried once again to flee his body.

 

And then it faded to a more tolerable misery, and he laid his palms flat, pushing himself up.  Slowly.  So slowly.

 

In the center of the table, a blade winked at him tauntingly.

 

Alastair’s razor.

 

_Because this is Hell, and no ordinary blade will kill the Benders._

 

_Alastair’s razor._

 

Dean stared, seconds ticking ominously on, at the offering that had been left for him.

 

_If I use it, draw even one drop of blood from one of those putrid sons of bitches...._

 

_Why does Alastair want me to do that so badly?_

 

_I’ll become a demon.  That much I know. But that can’t be all.  The look on his face….there’s gotta be more._

 

Something thick and wet slicked its way down Dean’s thigh, and the image of his body, impaled on the two psychopaths as they literally tore him apart, his blood the only lubricant, flashed through his mind.

 

_I can’t.  Can’t live through that again.  I can’t._

 

He picked up the blade.

 

* * *

  


_Seven minutes._

 

It had taken three precious ones to free his hands, force himself to move.

Now Dean set about laying his traps.

 

_Six minutes._

He stayed low, adrenaline returning grace and efficiency to his movements despite his injuries.

 

_Five minutes._

A heavy object would fall here.

 

_Four minutes._

Oil would coat a smooth surface there.

 

_Three minutes._

A reflection would cause confusion at this spot.

 

_Two minutes._

He’d make his final stand right here.

 

_One minute._

All he needed was a way to draw them in.

 

* * *

 

 

“Daddy, Daddy!”  Missy’s shrill voice rang out, skeletal arm pointing at him through the open doorway.  “He’s here! He’s right here! He never left!”

 

_Time’s up._

Dean smiled.

 

* * *

  
  


Alastair kicked his way through the rubble, thoroughly pissed.

 

He came to the charred remains of Pa Bender and brought his foot down hard, snorting as the fragile skull crumbled to ash.

 

“Alastair,”  and the pale demon startled, dropping to his knees before his master.  “You disappoint me. Again.” Lucifer looked down at his number one torturer, and his face creased into a frown.  

Alastair’s head hung low.  “I’m sorry, Master. It won’t happen again.”

“He brought a whole fucking _house_ down.  Burned the bones of four _marvelous_ demons.  Burned. their. _bones_.  In Hell. Without using Hellfire.  You know what that means, right?”

“Yes, Sire.”  Alastair’s voice was strained.  “They are lost to us.”

Lucifer crouched before his cowering subordinate.

“Lucky for you, _his_ bones were preserved.”

“Yes.  Thank you for that, Sire.”

“And when I came to get him, look what I found!”

 

Lucifer held his hand at eye level, watching the reflection of dying flames flicker off of the blade that he twirled between his fingers.

 

Alastair trembled.

“I believe this belongs to you, Allie.”  The King of Hell held the razor out, butt forward, beneath his minion’s nose.

Alastair raised a shaking hand to accept the offering.

“My room, Alastair.  Now.”

Terror and helplessness deepened the lines in the demon’s face as he raised pleading eyes to his master.

 

Lucifer met his gaze, expression void of any hint of mercy, humanity, or compassion.

 

“Yes, Sire,” Alastair rasped.

 

* * *

  
  


From its seat on the smoldering form strapped to the rack, the watchful incubus cackled out its glee.


	25. HOLIER THAN THOU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is also the last chapter in "Master Of Puppets", which details some more incidents in Dean's time in Hell. Enjoy!

* * *

  
“Oh, my.”  The she-demon strolled around her prize, razor-edged nails trailing blood in the wake of her passing.  “You know what I call this, Dean?”

With the knot gagging him, he could not have answered if he’d wanted to.  

She paused behind him, her appreciative “Mm, mm, mm” resonating with the growing fear in his chest.  “Poetic justice. That’s what I call it.”

 

_ Doesn’t matter not real no matter what she does you’ll wake up whole again _

_ Yeah, and it will start over.  Or worse. _

_ I can’t do this anymore.   _

_ I can’t. _

 

* * *

  
  


Alastair appeared, ignoring the other demon’s indignant, “Hey!” as he knelt before his toy.

“Open your eyes, Dean,” the sibilant voice called gently.

Instead Dean squeezed them shut tightly, trying to will his tears away.

 

_ Can’t can’t can’t _

 

Alastair stroked tender fingers through the  hunter’s sweat-thick hair. “Tomorrow doesn’t have to be like this, dear boy.  You can wake up, whole and new, and stay off the rack. No more pain, no more torment.”

 

He waited.

 

_ Can’t  _

_ can’t do this anymore _

_ I can’t  _

 

“Take my blade, Dean.   _One_ soul. That’s all you have to do: every day, start just one soul.  The rest of the day will be yours.” He leaned in close, voice a seductive lisp in Dean’s immobilized ear.  “You can eat, sleep, fuck -- even drive a certain black sixty-seven Impala that I know you’ve been missing. All you have to do is say ‘yes’, Dean.”

 

He touched the knot, and it faded away.

 

The blade winked enticingly as he rotated it in his fingers, holding it a comfortable distance from the clouded verdance of Dean’s spectacular eyes.

 

“What do you say, Dean?  Have you had enough torture?  Are you ready to reap the rewards for all of the sacrifices you’ve made?”

 

_ Sacrifices. _

_ Sammy. _

_ I miss Sammy. _

 

“I can arrange for you to see him.”

Dean closed his eyes, and the tears fell.

 

_ I wanna see Sammy. _

 

And he pictured himself greeting his brother.

In Hell.

Bloodied blade in his hand.

 

“I can’t.”  It was a despairing sob, full of regret.  

 

Alastair stood, eyes narrowed, jaw tight.  “Your choice.” He turned to Meg. “Let me know if you run out of ideas.”

 

And he was gone.

 

* * *

  
  


“You always were a glutton for punishment, weren’t you, Dean?”

She snapped her fingers and the intricate harness fell away, leaving him standing with his arms around a thick post, rough fibers abrading his bound wrists.

He heard the telltale whisper of leather cutting air before fire detonated across his back, breath hissing through his teeth in reaction as his back arched, seeking escape.

There was no pause to allow one strike to peak before the  next fell. Instead, each came in rapid succession, falling with metronomic regularity, fire burning hotter and wider with each passing second, blood slicking his skin, liquifying his limbs, the wood chewing at his as it slid down the post almost pleasant by contrast, and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t scream or beg or --

The silence informed him that the demon had paused.  The raw misery that was his back continued to shriek, feeling nonexistent lashes scald exposed nerve endings, when it was in fact no more than the normally undetectable flow of air through the room that fanned the flames of his torment.

His head hung, eyes once again closed, breath stuttering in his chest.

He felt the space around him thicken with her approach.

Was too weary to care.

She forced what felt like a crown of barbed wire onto his head, a pain so miniscule and distant compared to what had come before that Dean might have laughed if his soul had not retreated so far into itself.

She snapped her fingers and he was once again screaming, the ruin of his back arching away from splintered wood as he found himself lying prone on the beam that he had embraced so tightly, arms outspread on an equally thick crossbeam, wrists strapped firmly to the rough surface.

Cold metal kissed his skin between strands of rope

And deep inside of him, terror contorted his soul as he realized what the demon had planned.

“Couldn’t think of anything more fitting for such a pitiful, self-sacrificing pussy like you, Dean.”

She drove the first railroad spike through his wrist and into the cross beneath.  “All the times you’ve crucified, yourself, Dean: this just feels like poetic justice.”

 

From its spot against the ceiling Dean’s soul covered its ears, desperate to prevent the gut-wrenching shrieks from penetrating as it watched its vessel being nailed to a cross.

 

* * *

  
  


“You look so close to perfect, I’m almost tempted to put a loincloth on you.”  Meg beamed up at him, fully satisfied with her living -- sort of -- sculpture.

 

From his position on the now vertical cross, Dean was able to observe the demon through slitted eyes without needing to raise his head.

_ Doesn’t matter how pleased she looks _ , he reminded himself.   _ She’s not done yet. _

He had given up cataloguing his injuries or even trying to decide which was causing the most torment.  From the barbs embedding themselves into his skull to the relentless incandescence of his back through the ragged throb of the metal impaling his wrists and feet, Dean’s misery was as all-encompassing as he anything he had experienced thus far.

Yet there he hung, nearly but not completely mindless, and from that he knew: there would be more.

 

_ She’s not done yet. _

_ But soon.  Can’t take much more.   _

_ Be over soon. _

 

* * *

  
  


Meg leaned back, one leg crossed over the other, foot bobbing impatiently as she brought a cigarette to her lips.  She inhaled deeply, held the smoke, then squinted through it as she allowed her breath to trickle slowly from her nostrils.

Like Alastair, Meg had learned that in the right circumstances, a certain type of soul can dissociate itself from the tortured vessel that houses it.  

 

She was waiting for Dean’s to come back.

 

She sauntered over to him, the pleasant burn of tobacco filling her lungs, and blew a thick stream of smoke up into his face.

The man grimaced as he smothered a cough, turning his head away.

She smiled as she dropped her cigarette to the floor.

“Nice to see you back, Dean.  I have a special surprise for you.”

She stood close enough that her breath rifled the coarse perfection of his pubic hair, and her grin broadened.  “Glad I resisted the urge to slap that diaper on you. It’s going to make this next part so much easier.”

 

She fisted his soft member, stroking him lightly.

 

Dean forced his eyelids to separate, barely believing that fear could still germinate in his exhausted soul.

 

Yet as he watched her hand move, absorbed that anticipatory gleam in her coal-black eyes, dread welled.

She raised her free hand, turning it over as she opened her fist.  “I brought a friend who would really like to play with you.”

The distinctive red head, black body, and yellow legs on the thick insect that curled on the demon’s palm was immediately recognizable to the crucified man.

Meg noted the flash of recognition, and her dimples deepened.  “So, you’re familiar with the giant desert centipede then?”

 

What had been dread crystallized into full-blown terror as her open hand neared the one fisted around his flaccid cock.

 

“This one is trained,” the demon informed him, a note of pride in her voice.  She emitted a short, sharp whistle, and Dean stared in horrified fascination as an endless number of golden limbs rippled, serpentine body uncoiling to a length that stretched along Meg’s forearm, nearly reaching the bend of her elbow.

 

“Ever heard of ‘urethral sounding’, Dean?  Cock-stuffing?”

 

Panic struck a second before the insect rested the first of its pointed feet on the head of his penis, and his soul fled his body shamelessly, watching in abject horror as the elongated torso with its seemingly endless number of stark yellow appendages forced its way into the exquisitely sensitive tunnel of Dean’s urethra.

 

The caustic agony of venom delivered to such a dense concentration of unprotected nerve endings radiated outward in expanding waves of excruciation, absorbing and amplifying every insult that had come before --

 

And for the first time, it was not circulatory failure nor the complete destruction of his vessel that ended Dean’s day; 

 

It was the decisive collapse of a nervous system that had no other method for coping with such an unimaginable level of misery.

  
  



	26. The Frayed Ends Of Sanity

 

* * *

  


Alastair stood before him.

Motionless.

Silent.  

 

"Hey, Allie.”  Dean hid his unease behind a mask of bravado.  “Your incubus take the day off?”

 

The Grand Torturer did not respond.

 

Dean could feel the pressure of the demon’s rage heating his skin.

 

_Why is he so pissed right now?_

 

In all of the hours and days and weeks and months and _years_ that Dean had spent at the mercy of this particular demon, Alastair had never seemed angry.  Sadistic, gleeful, lust-crazed...maybe a little frustrated or annoyed. But never truly _angry_.

Panic skittered in the hunter’s chest.

 

_Gonna be okay.  What more can he do that hasn’t already been done?_

 

As it turned out, there was a whole lot more.

 

* * *

  


The first new experience was the thin metal spike that Alastair unceremoniously drove into Dean’s right armpit.

 

He started out pressing: long, slender fingers digging in as the demon kept his eyes locked on his subject’s face.

Dean squirmed.  “Hey. I’m ticklish, you know.”  

He hid the instinctive wince when those probing digits hit something tender, but Alastair, alert to every miniscule fluctuation in his toy’s expression, smiled.  Stabilizing the top of Dean’s shoulder with one hand, he drove the fingers of the other in deep, and Dean gasped as a sharp ache shot through his arm all the way to his fingertips, up into his shoulder, and spread into the entire right side of his body, causing his knee to buckle.

 

That’s when the spike appeared.

 

Alastair pressed the metal into flesh, guiding it with his forefinger until it penetrated the bundle of nerves he had located at the juncture between humerus and scapula.  

The sensation was distinctively excruciating, a piercing ache that radiated out in an explosion of mind-numbing misery.

Dean gritted his teeth,  fighting nausea as his legs buckled and sweat beaded on his upper lip.

 

_Not real won’t last not real_

 

Alastair’s smirk didn’t fade as he twisted, driving the metal in deeper.

The agony expanded, burning through the bones of Dean’s shoulder and arm, pooling with breathless intensity in his elbow, his jaw, the joints of each finger.

 

_Don’t scream over soon don’t scream don’t scream_

 

The pike struck bone.

Dean heard the quiet groan that he could not quite control.

 

Alastair stepped back.

A small  hammer appeared in his right hand.

 

_No no no god no please_

 

Helpless to avoid the coming horror, Dean locked his teeth against a base urge to plead for mercy, closed his throat to the sobs that threatened to humiliate him.

 

Alastair dropped his hand to his side, only to bring the tool he held up in a wide arc, striking the head of the thin nail squarely.

Dean’s agonized scream was choked down to a short, animalistic sound, somewhere between a growl and a gasp.

His brain shut down, diaphragm cramped in an unrelenting contraction as every cell in his body froze, overwhelmed with sensation.

 

Time slowed to a crawl.

 

The door of Dean’s mind eased open, allowing calculated bits of sensory information to breach the threshold, testing out the waters.

His fingertips tingled at the end of a numb arm.  

A pocket of lava seemed to exist inside the center of his shoulder.  

Fire licked down his side.

 

A frantic alert -- _Hurts hurts hurts stop please hurts_ \-- replaced the normal soothing mantra in  his head, but he could think, which was a vast improvement over the earlier level of mind-numbing horror.

 

He inhaled carefully through his nose.

Exhaled with equal wariness.

When nothing worsened and no sound escaped, the paralysis broke, and Dean sagged in his restraints, tears leaking from his closed eyes.

 

In the past Alastair would have taken a moment to explain, with pride in his voice, exactly why the new atrocity he had inflicted was so terribly effective.

Today he simply noted his subject’s vulnerability, gave a tight-lipped nod, and attached the leads of a battery charger to the protruding end of the spike.   Careful to avoid touching the rod, Alastair stepped back and flipped a switch on the small machine.

 

The keening wail that his subjected emitted fell somewhere between a shriek and a scream.

Dean’s body convulsed, head thrown back, spine arching painfully as every muscle from the top of his head to the end of each toe contracted simultaneously.

Urine trickled in a wet stream down his leg.

Alastair watched, appreciating the sharp delineation of the corded muscles and tendons in his toy’s neck, a warm glow of lust emerging through the ravenous glut of rage as he listened to the man’s teeth fracture.

Dean’s drawn-out cry crescendoed, then diminished to silence as his lungs deflated.

Alastair toggled the switch, and the hunter slumped, vomit now joining the list of bodily fluids bathing the man’s skin.

As before, conscious thought was lost to the tortured figure.  Dean’s soul separated from its vessel, and its sobbed _“Please, stop! Please!”_ went unheard.

 

This separation was familiar to Alastair, and he watched his toy closely, waiting for the soul to return.

 

The reunion of spirit to flesh occurred with enormous deliberation as the soul quavered in fear, prepared to retreat at the first indication of renewed agony.

Alastair waited, expression that of infinite patience.

 

_No more please no more_

 

Awareness emerged like a ship cutting through a smothering fog.

 

_Hurts god what is that hurts fuckin' hurts son of a bitch_

 

He felt his chest heave with unborn sobs, each hitched breath lancing through his pierced limb with barbed agony.

 

_Breathe Dean breathe in out slow_

_Slow_

 

Heard his teeth grind.  Felt his muscles quiver.

 

_Cold.  so cold_

 

An even colder hand fisted in his hair, yanking his head up.

“Open your eyes.”

Dean’s head spun.

“That was an order, Dean.”

 

_Dad --_

 

He forced his eyelids to part, staring through lashes glistening with desperate tears.  “Dad. Sorry.”

He didn’t recognize his own harsh, whisper-soft voice.

 

Alastair snorted.

 

Dean registered the contempt in that brief sound, and his soul gave a panicked flutter.  “Sorry. Won’t,” he swallowed against a dry tongue, “won’ hap’en ag’in. Sorry.  'M sorry.”

Alastair slapped the boy, mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust.

Dean cringed, grief at his perceived failure biting more deeply than any place Alastair could reach, no matter which torture device he brought to bear.

 

Lucifer pushed away from the wall, uncrossing his arms.  “He always do that?”

Terror flitted briefly across the Grand Tormentor’s face.  “Do what, Sire?”

“Apologize to his father.”

“Not every time, no,” Alastair admitted.  

“And do you use it?”  Lucifer pressed, massaging his chin with one forefinger as he studied the man before them.

“I have, yes.  So far it has not been effective.”

Lucifer slanted an annoyed glance at the snivelling demon.  “Obviously.” He curled his arm across his abdomen, supporting the opposite elbow in his cupped palm, the forefinger and thumb curling over his lower jaw as he contemplated the enigma of Dean Winchester.  “You’ve got more planned for him today, I take it?” He began to pace, circling around their subject, examining his nude form.

“Yes, Sire.”

Lucifer nodded to himself, eyes never leaving the form hanging from the rack.  “Do it all as John.” He crossed his arms over his chest. A smile teased at the corners of his mouth.  “Tomorrow, it’ll be _my_ turn.”

Alastair paled just before his neck flushed with suppressed indignation. “Yes, Sire.”

 

He turned away, slinging a toolbelt around narrow hips as he settled into the rugged attractiveness of John Winchester’s face.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	27. LEPER MESSIAH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucifer has grown impatient with Alastair's failed attempts at turning Dean. He's taken over, and rather than going straight for the kill, he has a plan. Like a master chess player, he can see the series of moves that are required to break Dean Winchester. The first step was convincing Dean that a Hell version of John would only inflict pain. Reminding him of all that lies between Sam and Dean is the second step.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I added this late! I wrote it months ago, and forgot about it. Just stumbled across it today, and figured it deserved to be added in. It's pretty tame compared to the other chapters, but still an important piece of the puzzle. Enjoy!

* * *

 

“Dean!”  Sam sat up, rubbing his eyes with both fists the way he had as a kid, and Dean grinned.  “Is it...is it really you?”

Dean glanced around the dingy motel room.   _ Alright, Alastair, what are you planning this time? _

“It’s really me, Sam.  How’ve you been?”

Sam was out of bed instantly, backing away warily.  “What are you? Shifter? Ghost?”

Dean sighed.  “I’m just me, Sam.  I mean...my soul, I guess.” He shrugged.  “They keep giving me a body, but I know it’s not real.  And since when do you sleep naked?”

Ignoring him, Sam dropped to his knees to rifle through a duffle bag.

“I sure hope you’re looking for clothes, there, Lady Godiva.”

Instead Sam retrieved a silver flask, tossing it to the image of his brother.  “Drink that.”

Dean caught the object deftly, twisted the cap off, and sniffed.  “Holy water? And I take it the flask is real silver, too.”

Sam crossed his arms over his chest, waiting.

“Nice,” Dean muttered, and drank.  “No smoke, no screaming. Satisfied?”

Sam’s demeanor didn’t change, and Dean sighed.  “You aren’t going to shoot me with a salt gun, are you?”

“Do I need to?”

Dean blew out a breath, shaking his head slightly.  “If that’s what it takes to convince you that I’m not a ghost,”  he spread his arms wide, “then go ahead.”  _ Won’t be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. _

Sam tilted his head toward the door.  “Cross that salt line.”

“Wait: are you kicking me out?  ‘Cause, damn, dude. That’s cold.”

Sam pursed his lips.

Dean shrugged.  “Whatever floats your boat, little brother.  You gonna cover up? Or should I ask for tips when I open the door?”

The younger man remained impassive.

Dean chuckled.  “I hope there’s a group of Japanese tourists out here taking pictures.”  He crossed to the door, being careful not to disturb the salt line as he opened it.

 

It was night, the sky the only kind of black that comes with heavy cloud cover at midnight, and completely silent.  “Creepy,” Dean muttered, feeling the hair on the back of his neck rise. He stepped through the doorway, keeping one hand on the frame and the other on the knob, and looked out.

The parking lot was empty, and the only building he could see was the one they were in.

He stepped out, releasing the frame but not the door, and looked along the line of the building.

_ Nothing.  Nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to smell. _

_ It’s not real. _

 

He went back inside.  “We good?”

Sam barrelled into him, nearly knocking Dean over with the force of his joy.  “Dean!”

He wrapped his arms around his older brother, tears instantly wetting Dean’s neck.

 

As soon as they made contact, Dean’s clothing disappeared.   _ Oh, nice.  Alastair, you are a fucking asshole. _

 

But Dean refused to let go of the brother that he hadn’t seen in decades.  Instead he clung tighter, ignoring the tears on his face but not the ones on his neck, rubbing his brother’s back while assuring him that this was real, and everything was going to be okay.

_ The room isn’t real, but Sam is.  I can feel it. I don’t know how Alastair did it, but this is Sam’s soul. _

 

Eventually Sam released his hold, pushing Dean out to arm’s length to assess him.  “You were in Hell! Are you hurt?” His hands moved, sliding over Dean in a way that brought back a flood of memories: hunts gone bad, Dean concussed and only semi-conscious, unable to answer his worried little brother’s questions well enough to satisfy the improbable mother-hen.

Dean covered his groin with both hands and tried not to think about how good it felt to be touched by someone who wasn’t trying to hurt or humiliate him.  “I’m fine, Sam.”

Dean had known that a statement from him wouldn’t satisfy the younger man, and he allowed the handling, making no objection as Sam’s large, warm, work-roughened palms swept over his chest and abdomen before turning him to skim over his back, his ass, his legs.

 

But when Sam turned him again, exploring Dean’s shoulders, then running his hands down Dean’s arms, the older brother refused to uncover his genitals.  _  I’m sure this fucking erection is Alastair’s doing, and there’s no way I’m going to try to explain that to Sam. _

 

Finally, the younger man was satisfied, and he spontaneously threw his arms around his big brother once more.   _ Awkward _ . Dean kept his dick covered but leaned his upper body into his brother, welcoming the embrace.

Sam finally sat, pulling a blanket over his lap, and Dean sighed in relief.  He glanced down at himself pointedly. “You got a towel or something?”

“They’re small and so threadbare they’re practically see-through.  Use this.” Sam chuckled, then tossed a pillow at him. “Since when are you all Captain Modesty, anyway?”

_ Since my dick is back to thinking like a fourteen-year-old, and I popped wood because of my own brother. _

Dean backed up to a chair beside the bed and sat, pillow over his lap.  “How are you?” He had noticed all of the alcohol bottles littering the room.  The clutter in general was not typical of Sam, and the amount of alcohol that his health-conscious brother appeared to have consumed was alarming. 

“I’m good.  You know...just…”  And he fell apart.

Dean slid forward just in time to catch him.  The crying earlier was a spring rain compared to the category five hurricane that was his little brother now, and Dean was mentally unprepared for the complete emotional breakdown he was witnessing.

His patting and murmurs of “It’s okay, Sam, it’s going to be okay,” only seemed to make things worse, so in the end he simply held his brother tightly, whispering, “I’m sorry, Sammy,” and “I love you” endlessly.

 

The deluge ended, as all storms do, and Sam rested bonelessly against his brother.  His skin was hot and sweat-slick, and Dean stroked circles in the middle of his back, waiting for his brother to speak.

“I got snot on you,” was the first thing he said, and Dean laughed.

“I’ve had worse.”

Sam excused himself to retrieve two towels, one damp, the other dry, from the bathroom.  Having already rinsed and dried his own face, he handed them off to Dean, who forced himself not to grimace as he cleaned the mess off of his neck and shoulder.

“Are you...are you back?  For good?”

Dean swallowed audibly.  “I don’t know.”

Sam waited, heart in his eyes.

Dean sighed.  “It’s Hell, you know?  They kinda figured out that I can handle pain okay, so now...They started messing with my mind.”

“So they sent you here to  _ torture  _ you?”  Sam sounded horrified.

Dean shrugged.  “Yeah, I guess so.  Or maybe I earned a break?  I don’t really know. They don’t exactly explain themselves.”   _ Unless they’re giving anatomy lessons. _  He decided it was time to change the subject.  “So, where is ‘here’, anyway?”

“Motel room in Oklahoma.  Following a lead on --”

Dean’s eye narrowed.  “A lead on what?”

Sam’s eyes shifted away.  “On getting you out.”

Dean exploded to his feet.  “Sam! Don’t you dare! You can’t risk -- “

Sam stood as well, nose to nose with his brother.  “Risk what, Dean? Going to Hell? Because what I’m living right now is the next best thing!”

Dean blinked.  “What? What do you mean?”

Sam dropped onto the bed, pulling the blanket back over his lap.  “I can’t stand being here without you, without Dad...without Jess.  I’m so fucking lonely, and there’s no end in sight. None of you are coming back, I just keep losing people, so how is this ever supposed to get better?”  There were tears in his eyes, in his voice, and the ache in Dean’s chest was a physical agony.

He dropped to his knees, hands covering Sam’s.  “But you have Bobby…”

Sam wiped an arm across his face.  “‘S not the same. I just miss you so fucking much.”

Dean pressed his forehead into their clasped hands.  _  It’s working, Alastair.  This is so much worse than everything you’ve done to me so far.  I fucking hate you, you evil son of a bitch. I hate you. _

He finally looked up, face wet.  “I know, buddy. I miss you, too.”  His voice broke. “You have no idea how much.  But Hell…” He felt a shudder work through him.  “You can’t be there, Sammy. I can’t...I can’t know that they’re...the things they do….”  He stood up, turning his back, arms wrapped tightly around his midsection. “I can deal with it happening to me, but not to you, and they know that.  The only thing that gets me through it is picturing you up here, moving on with your life, getting married, having kids….being happy. That’s what I think about when it gets bad down there. I think about you, happy.”

 

He felt Sam’s hand on his back, rubbing gently, before the younger brother turned the older, forcing him into a hug.  “I’m sorry, Dean. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder, okay? For you, I’ll try harder to be happy.”

  
  


* * *

 

 

“Dean?”

Sam sat up, rubbing his eyes with both fists the way he had as a kid.

His voice echoed back to him in the empty motel room like the ghost of his brother’s laughter.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Dean couldn’t stop his tears when he realized he was back on the rack.  Didn't even try to.

 

He was too emotionally exhausted for the customary rage he typically felt when confronted with Alastair’s satisfied smirk.

“Did you enjoy your little conjugal visit, Dean?”  Lucifer smirked behind the guise of Alastair that he had adopted.  Continuing the role play, he stepped in close, breath fanning his captive’s cheek.  “Little brother is trying to get to you, but you can stop him. Take my blade, and we’ll send you back topside.  I promise.” He leaned back, expectant.

“As a human?”  Dean refused to meet his tormentor’s eyes.

“Well, no.  We can find you a human vessel, of course, but you would be a demon. That’s what taking my blade  _ means _ .”

 

_ Sammy...I can’t save you.  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. _

“No.”

  
  
  
  
  



	28. THE CALL OF KTULU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucifer has forced a reluctant Alastair to step aside. Can the Prince of Darkness accomplish what Hell's Grand Torturer could not?

* * *

  
The tattered remains of Dean’s vessel hung from the rack, devoid of any characteristic that could be construed as ‘life’.  

His soul, having fled the horror that it could no longer endure, was now trapped, wraith-like and insensate, in a state of suspended animation.

“Would you like me to restore him, Sire?”

Lucifer held up a hand, halting the Grand Torturer in his tracks.

He stood before the rack, the arm across his abdomen bracing its opposite's elbow, massaging his chin with his fist.  

 

Strips of pink and white flesh hung off the figure like the sad remnants of a New Year’s parade.  The fingernails had been removed from one hand, while the fingers themselves were noticeably absent from the other.  

Exposed ends of fractured ribs glinted a bright white against the darkening blush of ravaged meat.

Thick ropes of gray-rose intestine hung from a long rent in the abdomen, a macabre privacy screen for the mutilated genitals behind them.

Pink foam had dripped from the man’s mouth to dry on his denuded sternum, proof that something untenable with the normal exchange of gases had been done to his lungs.

 

Lucifer bent his knees, gazig up into the man’s face.

 

His lips and teeth were gone, eye sockets nothing but ash.

As Lucifer watched, one bruised cheek began to pulse and recede.

The movement continued until a spike-haired brown leg emerged man from the man’s mouth, followed at length by a cephalothorax, a bloated abdomen, and seven sharp-jointed legs.

“Eww.”  Lucifer shuddered dramatically.  “I hate spiders.”

 

He stepped back, gaze scraping over his cowering subordinate.  “The back look as good as the front?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Good.”  He turned away.  “You can go now.”

He knuckled into his smile, pretending not to notice the flash of resentful possessiveness that Alastair could not fully suppress.   _He’ll be begging for forgiveness for that later_.    

He tilted his head as his subordinate walked away.   _Yeah.  I’ll own that ass again later, Ally._

 

* * *

 

 

Lucifer drummed his fingers along his jaw, focus once more on the problem before him.  “Restore him and start over, or just fix some of him? Hmmm… Decisions, decisions.”

 

He snapped his fingers and the figure on the rack announced its reanimation with a drawn out, gasping shriek.

Lucifer waited, face impassive.  “Demon healing is a little painful, I admit.  More like being spot-welded together by a millwright on crack than the ‘puzzle-put-together-oh-so-carefully-by-your-dear-old-granny’ shit that the angels do.”

The shrieking died down to a whistling keen which faded to a series of piteous whimpers before ending with dysrhythmic but quiet breaths, punctuated by the occasional groan.

 

“You got control of yourself pretty quickly there, bud. I’m proud of you.” Lucifer had always secretly been a little turned on by John Winchester’s deep, whiskey-scarred voice, and he allowed the resonance of it on his tongue to spread out through his body, making his dick hum.

 

Dean was still too far gone for his shaken soul to register the familiar tones and less familiar praise.

_Why aren’t I whole it ended I know it ended s’posed to be whole no pain for a lil’ bit s’posed to be --_

 

“Sorry I didn’t get here earlier.”  Lucifer had dropped to a crouch, placing himself in Dean’s line of sight.  “We started trying right away, Dean.” He reached up, calloused palm cupping the destroyed hunter’s cheek gently.  “You in there, Son? You with me?”

 

Dean’s right hand, positioned straight out to his side, palm up, twitched.

The fire in his denuded fingertips flared as the motion pulled on forming scabs.

_S’posed to be whole get a break no pain not fair_

 

Lucifer chuckled as he stood.  He pressed his fingers together, reaching under the curtain of bowel to lay them flat against the Hellhound-gnawed remnants of Dean’s penis, and drew his hand up incrementally.

Dean writhed -- _fire ants under my skin climbing me biting biting burns stop please stop_ \-- head thrown back, lips drawing away from the marriage of clenched teeth as if avoiding the contact of soft skin on enamel could somehow alleviate his  pain.

Flesh rippled in the wake of the archangel’s hand, and the motion of realigning tissues certainly could have been mistaken for that of a thousand busy insects buried beneath the man’s skin.   _That_ is _what it looks like,_ Lucifer mused, momentarily distracted by a fond memory.   _But ants don't leave everything looking so_ \-- he licked his lips as he drank in the sight of the smooth, muscled torso under his palm -- _pretty_.

When he reached his subject's collar bone, he broke contact.

 

Pain dissipated like steam on the surface of a lake, pulling tension along with it.

Dean’s soul sobbed, disgusted with itself for the pathetic surge of gratitude it felt for the creature standing before it.

_Alastair.  Changing the rules again.  Fucking with my head._

 

“I’m sorry that I’m not able to fix all of it,” the Master Deceptor lied, “but I could do a little more.  What hurts the most, Son?”

 

 _Dad_! Shot through his soul at the same time that the stabbing-throbbing-burning ache that lived in Dean’s right armpit and radiated outward, a Barbarian horde waging war on that entire side of his body, battled its way to the forefront, demanding attention.

Dean’s soul cowered, quavering.   _‘S Alastair fuckin with your head don’t let him know gotta hide it he’ll use it make it worse_

Terror rendered him mute.

 

John’s face twisted into a sympathetic grimace as he reached out, stopping just short of the cold rod protruding from Dean’s armpit.  “Damn. That’s gotta hurt. Remember that time that damned ghost threw me into a hunk of rebar?” He rubbed a spot low on his side, just above the hip bone.  “Still got the scar.”

 

_Dad want Dad_

_It’s not him Alastair pretending hurting_

_Need him please Dad please_

_Can’t be him Dad’s in Heaven  he wouldn't  hurt --_

_Please, Dad. Please!_

 

“I know this is going to hurt while I take it out, but then it will be a whole lot better.  You okay with that? You ready?”

“ _Dad_.”  It came out as a broken whimper, and Dean hated himself for it.

Fingers tender on the skin at his temple, heartbreak in the man’s voice as John murmured, “Shhh, shhh.  Gonna be alright, Dean-o. Gonna get you out of here. Just hang on.”

 

_It’s not him_

_Can't be him_

_Alastair hurting hurting all day hurting_

 

_Hurting, not healing_

_It might be_

 

Lucifer watched the replica of John’s hand close around the metal bar, feeling the thing vibrate with the boy’s internal agony.

He braced his other hand -- also John’s -- on the young hunter’s naked chest, a low frisson of anticipation pulsing in his groin.

 

The rod glowed as he withdrew it slowly.

 

Dean’s head rocked back, spine bowed in shocked rictus as every nerve ending that signaled “pain” and “hot” fired simultaneously.

_No god stop please Dad sorry please_

Until his soul reverted back to its most primal form, one without thought or language, and he fought wildly against his restraints, desperate for escape, pain too large for his vessel to contain rushing from his throat in a protracted, abrasive scream.

 

He came back to himself to find his face buried in the softness his father’s shirt

Strong hand at the back of his neck, pinning him there

Hard cheek against the top of his head

Soft sounds of comfort caressing his ears

Mixed scents of cologne and deodorant and gun cleaner and faint sweet sweat unlocking memories

Unlocking _want_

Releasing hope and longing and desperation

 

“Dad?”

He wanted to bring his arms around, feel his father solid and immortal beneath his palms

_Need this to be real --_

_It’s not.  He’s done it before Alastair’s done it before not Dad don’t believe it tricking you he’s tricking you_

_But he's healing me holding me never done that before taking pain away need it need him please_

 

 _Guard your soul, Dean_ \-- and the voice in his head was his father’s.

 

“Yeah, Dean.  It’s me. I’m here.”  He pulled away, framing Dean’s face with both of his large, calloused palms, tilting until the green of the young man’s irises became visible, magnified by held tears.  “I’m sorry it took so long to get to you, but I’m here now, and I’m breaking you out, okay?” He thumbed away the dampness on Dean’s cheeks. “I can’t heal everything yet -- gotta save enough juice to angel  us out of here -- but once we’re topside, I’ve got friends waiting to finish what I started.”

 

Dean’s head spun, soul warring with itself

_He’s really here_

_Not real_

_Gonna get me out_

_He’s in Heaven_

_Take me topside_

_It’s another trick_

_Angel us out he said  he could angel us out_

 

Dean's soul went still.

 

_He’s an angel_

_He went to Heaven you saw it bright light rising up_

_He’s here_

_Angels can’t get into Hell_

_They can if they try hard enough_

_He’s here_

_Healing me_

_He’ll save me_

_My dad will save me_

 

“Dad!”  Sobbing, tears flowing, relief and hope and malicious doubt shredding him.

“Yeah, Son.  It’s me. It’s really me. I’m sorry it took so long, bud.”  He wiped a hand over the wet tracks on his face, a familiar gesture that sent a stab of 'home' through Dean’s chest.  “We been tryin’ ever since we found out.” He shook his head, dimples creasing in a rueful grin. “I thought some of _our_ hunts were hard.  Do you have any idea the research involved in figuring out how to get a fricken’ angel into -- and then back out of -- Hell?”

 

_‘S over almost over I knew he’d come knew someone would save me Dad or Sam or Bobby would save me_

 

“We got a few more minutes until everything’s in place for us to get the hell out of Dodge.  Or dodge our way out of Hell.”

Dean chuckled weakly, appreciating the pun that Sam would have rolled his eyes at.

“Let’s get you off of this thing.”

Dean struggled to suppress any outward sign of the agony his father’s manipulations caused, knowing it was worth it, not wanting to discourage the man or slow his movements, needing to be off that rack, to be done, _no more pain, no more Alastair, all of it behind me, all of it. Finally. Over._

He kept quiet, but his tortured body would not obey his command to support its own weight, forcing John to lower his son oh-so-carefully to the cold stone of the floor.

They ended with John cross-legged, Dean gangly and awkward on his lap, face tucked against John’s neck, wetting his father’s collar with his tears.

John rocked his broken child the way he had when Dean was just a toddler: with his arms locked around him, promising safety as they imparted their warmth.

 

_Dad._

_Sorry thank you I'm sorry_

_Dad._

 

When Dean’s breathing had normalized, the flow of dampness on John’s neck had slowed, and the youn man's deep tremors had faded to a nearly imperceptible vibration, John spoke.  “So how’d you end up here, Dean? They said they didn’t know. You were shielded from us after Sammy died, and then he was alive, and you were gone. Felt like it took forever to find you.”

He continued to rock, palm a delicious abrasion as it glided repeatedly over the back of Dean’s arm.

_Do I tell  him? Will he be mad?_

“I -- “  his throat felt like it was coated with powdered glass.  His tongue twisted and stretched, searching for moisture.  He collected what little he found, wincing as he swallowed what could have been battery acid for all the relief it provided.  “I made a deal.” _Like you did for me_ , but the words hurt too much to give them life.

“God damnit, Dean!”  

Hands that had been soothing him now dug in, and Dean flinched away from his father’s anger.

“Not like I hadn’t already guessed it,” John muttered, and his grip softened.  “But what the hell were you thinking? I gave you explicit instructions, Dean! You had to save Sam, or kill him.  You. There was no one else. And instead, you did this?”

Dean pressed  his face into his father’s neck.  “Sorry. Sorry.” _Don’t be mad please I need you to not be mad_

“Your brother is falling apart Dean.  He is falling apart. Having sex with a demon.  Drinking her blood. Killing --” He broke off, and shame lanced through the blanket of pain over Dean’s mind as he realized how hard his father was  fighting for control. “He’s made himself judge, jury, and executioner.”

“No.”   _He wouldn’t Sam wouldn’t he’s good he wouldn’t_

“It’s why I’m here, Dean.  They sent me to drag you out, get you back topside.  Get Sam straightened out.”

_Sammy.  Gotta save Sammy._

“Lucifer wants him, Dean.  He wants your brother, and he’s getting him.  He’s going to own your brother’s soul.”

“Nooo.”   _Not Sam he’s good m’ brother better ‘n me_

“He _was_ , Dean.  He _was_ better than you.”

_Did I say that out loud? Didn’t hear it feel it jus in my head_

“He isn’t anymore.”  He pressed his fingertips to Dean’s forehead.

 

* * *

* * *

 

_The motel room was littered with empty bottles, equal parts beer and cheap whiskey._

_Sam leaned against the headboard, unwashed hair heavy on his scalp._

_He was nude, legs sprawled, one hand fisted around the neck of a bottle, fingers of the other entwined in the hair of the woman who crouched between his legs.  He tipped the bottle to his lips as he forced her head down, seeming not to notice as her torso contracted in a reflexive gag._

_His adam’s apple bobbed repeatedly as he tilted the bottle, apparently intent on draining it._

_The woman tried to rise, a tentative motion at first, gaining strength as the need to breathe lent panic to her efforts._

_Sam tossed the bottle away in order to grip the girl’s scalp with both hands, triceps bunching and forearms in his muscles cording, ankles crossing over the suffocating female's lower back._

_A tight mask of sadistic pleasure melted into mindless bliss as he stuttered out his orgasm into the now-limp form between his thighs._

_He shifted, snagging one pale and flaccid limb with his long fingers.  Drawing the woman’s wrist to his mouth, he bit deeply into the tender flesh, lips staining crimson as his throat worked and his body shuddered its way through a second orgasm._

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Dean jerked his head back, “No!” ripping out of his soul.

“That was a demon he was with.  He drinks her blood and he fucks her and she can get him to do any damned thing she wants.”

 

_No no god no not Sam Sammy Sam no_

 

“Lucifer wants him here, and the way things are going, he’s going to get what he wants.”  John shifted.  “Let’s get you lying down, alright?  I need to do something about some of this mess.  Get you cleaned up so you can go see Sam.”

 _Sam see Sam_  “I...I get to see him?”  He wanted to cry, the hope and the need and the doubt all so strong -- _it’s a trick done it before don’t believe him guard your soul_

“Yeah.”  John eased his older son to the floor.  “Sorry I don’t have anything for you to lay on.”

“‘S okay.”   _Sam see Sam need Sam_

_Sammy_

“He’s going to do something.  We don’t know what. All we know is that if Lucifer wants it, it can’t be good.”  He rested his fingertips at the tops of Dean’s shoulders.

The skin on the young hunter’s back, buttocks, and thighs had been flayed down to bone.

“Hang on.  This is going to hurt.”

 

The writhing, biting, burning horror of demon healing ignited, and all thoughts of Sam -- of anything -- were lost to shrieking agony and desperate attempts to get away -- _burns burns get away_ \-- fingers clawing at rough stone, legs jerking and spasming, tears coursing unheeded to slick the floor beneath him.

 

His abdomen convulsed as the healing ended, and John used his son’s shoulders to drag the boy’s face out of a puddle of vomit.

“Shh.  Shh. It’s all over now.  You’re alright. You’re going to be alright.”

Dean melted into the floor, sobbing.   _Can’t do this can’t take this too much too long can’t just can’t_

John carded his fingers through his son’s hair, waiting for the storm to pass.  “Get it together, Dean. Gotta get you dressed, get you to Sammy. We can’t kill him;  he’ll just come straight here. We need you to save him. You’ve got to save your brother, Dean.”

 

_Sam save Sam see Sam need Sam_

 

Dean fought the sobs that racked him.  Willed the flow of tears to end.

Gathered strength he would have sworn he didn’t have, and pushed himself up onto his knees.

“Wha -- what do I have to do?"  He raised his eyes, desperate for the comfort of his father's faith.  "How do I save him?”

 

John’s face was grim.  “If he dies now, his soul belongs to Hell.  It’s gotta be cleaned, so he’s righteous again.”  

 

Dean trembled under the cold horror that climbed up out of his soul.

 

“You have to cleanse him, Dean.  You have to help him repent.”

  
  



	29. WELCOME HOME

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The boys make reference to scenes from "Atonement" in this chapter.

* * *

 

“We’re putting you two in a protected place.  Kind of like a middle dimension, or something.  It’ll keep you shielded from demons while you work.”  John leaned against a wall, arms folded over his chest, watching Dean fight his way into sweats and a t-shirt.

 

_ White room cinder block walls smells like a basement _

_ Sammy _

 

Dean pretended to lose his balance in the struggle to get his foot into his pants, using the motion to turn away from his father, hiding a growing erection that he was loathe to explain, even to himself.

“How long?”

“How long have you got?”

Dean nodded, tugging soft cotton over his hips.

John shrugged.  “As long as it takes, I guess.  Or until Lucifer finds you. Not sure we can prevent him from taking both of you if it comes to that.”

The shirt in Dean’s hand shook with the force of his heart beat.  “Sam...Sam can’t be here.” His voice was ragged. 

“Then do your job, Dean.”  There never had been nor ever would be any compromise with John Winchester.

He nodded submissively.  “Yes, Sir.”

 

* * *

  
  


“Sammy.”  Dean crossed the room in two long-legged strides, nearly choking on his brother’s name.

“Dean!”

They fell into each other, arms compressing with enough force to drive the pain of separation into a deep corner of each man’s soul.

“I thought I’d never see you again.”

“I tried, Dean.  I tried so hard. You have no idea.”  

Dean felt his brother’s tears soaking into the hair behind his ear, and he ran his hands over the boy’s back, soothing him.  “I know, buddy. I know.”

When they separated, it was just enough to be able to see each other’s face: their palms still rested on the other’s forearms.

“This place looks familiar.”  Sam turned his head, taking in the pristine white of the cinder block room.  “Like I’ve seen it in a...in a dream, or something.”

_ We sucked each other’s cocks in this room. _  Dean took a step back, using feigned curiosity as an excuse to break contact.   He did a slow turn.  “Not big on decorating, huh?”

Sam’s chuckle sounded nervous.  “You have any idea where we are?”

Dean licked his lips.  “Sort of. Some in-between space.  Dad said the demons can’t find us here.”

Sam pulled his head back, brows furrowing.  “Wait -- what? That was a lot, Dean! ‘In-between space’, ‘Dad’, and ‘demons’?  Care to enlighten me, here?”

Dean started pacing.  He knew it was a tell, that Sam would figure out that he was going to be filtering and maybe even lying, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Did you just lie to me, Dean?  Are we both in Hell?”

Dean stopped immediately, facing his brother, hands out.  “No! No, I swear! That’s not it!” He sighed, looking for pockets to stuff his hands into, at a loss when he realized that the sweats had none.  “It’s just...Dad said….”

He glanced up.

Sam’s bitch-face was firmly in place. Somehow Dean found reassurance in that predictable response.

“He said that...that you’re….your soul…”

Sam shook his head, impatient with the inadequate explanation.  “So, back up: Dad’s in Heaven. How did he tell you anything at all?”

Dean relaxed, finally seeing the path this conversation could take.  “He’s an angel, Sam! He got me off the rack, healed me.” He bit his lip, fighting the urge to start pacing again.  Forced his hands to stay still at his sides. “He said that they sent him to get me out so I could...save you.”

“Save me from what, exactly?”  Sam had his arms folded over his chest.  To Dean his little brother seemed to swell, bulging with malevolence.

_ Sammy? _

“He...uh...He said...you’ve been hanging out with a demon.”

“Yeah?  So what if I have?  You left me, Dean. Pulled me out of Heaven and then fucking _left_ me.  What did you expect me to do?”

“I expected you to get a fucking _life_!  Go back to college, find a girl, get married!  Not start fucking a goddamn _demon_ , Sam!”

“I tried, Dean.  I tried. But you wanna know something?  I had that life, and I hated it.”

 

Dean stared at him, a vague feeling of disquiet pooling in his chest.  “What? What are you talking about?”

 

Sam took a step closer.  “I was in Heaven, Dean. When I died.  Did you know that?”

 

Dean shook his head, surprise rendering him mute.

 

“You said I was gone three days, but up there, time is different.  I mean, every day is pretty much the same, your idea of perfection playing over and over again, so it’s hard to keep track.  Three weeks, three months, three years...I don’t really know.” 

Now it was Sam’s turn to pace. “I got to make it what I wanted it to be, Dean.  So there was college, and Jess, and Mom and Dad.” He stopped, facing his brother.  “But there was no hunting. No threat of pain or death to make living something worth savoring.”  One long stride closed the distance between them until they were sharing one another’s heat. “There was no you.”

“Sam -- “

“Shhh.”  The younger brother laid his palm over the elder’s lips.  “Let me finish.”

Dean’s eyes were as wide and trusting as a child’s.

Sam smiled fondly at him, withdrawing his hand, curling  his fingers against the echo of his brother’s lips on his palm.  “I didn’t tell anyone, but I started getting bored. Started _hating_ it.”

 

Dean realized that he could taste his brother’s breath.   _ Close he’s too close _

_ Missed him.  God, I’ve missed him. _

 

“I was looking for a way out, Dean.  And then...you saved me.”

“Sammy,” Dean’s voice was choked.  “D-Dad said...he s-said I have to s-save you. Again.”  

Sam’s eyes roamed his brother’s face.  “Save me how? Save me from what?” He raked his fingernails along Dean’s temple.  “I’m here. You’re here. This is my Heaven, Dean.”

 

_ He’s touching me why is he touching me _

_ Feels so good _

 

Dean swallowed, forcing a mix of emotions he didn’t understand deeper into his core, just enough to free his vocal chords.  “This is...we can’t stay here, Sam. They won’t let us.” He took a step back, hoping to regain his equilibrium. “Dad said if you -- if you d-die now, you’ll go to Hell, Sammy.”  The thought of his brother suffering that fate straightened Dean’s spine and blew cobwebs from his mind. “That can’t -- I can’t let that happen to you, Sam. You gotta repent, man.  You gotta -- not sayin’ you’re gonna die, not any time soon, but someday you will, we all do, and you can’t -- you can’t end up here, man.” His voice broke, and he chose to ignore it.  “You don’t deserve this. I can’t...I can’t…” He shook his head. “All my life I tried to keep you from getting hurt, Sammy, and that’s all there is down here. I can’t see you hurt. I can’t watch them do the things to you that they’ve done to me.”  He felt the tears on his face, didn’t care if Sam saw. “Please, Sammy.  _ Please _ .”

 

Sam’s pupils were wide.  A flush had crept up his neck into his cheeks.  He had not removed his fingers from Dean’s hair.  “What, Dean? What do you want me to do?” He sidled closer, their bodies nearly touching.

 

_ Why’s he so close? _

_ Just want to hold him _

_ My baby brother _

_ Keep him close _

_ Never let go _

 

“I -- I don’t know.  S-say you’re sorry, I guess?”  Dean needed room to think, wanted to draw back, but didn’t know how.  “I...Dad just said...said I had to… you have to repent. Didn’t say what that means.”  The last words came out as a breath.

“And what happens if I don’t?”  His eyes were on Dean’s mouth, fingertips running from his temple to the curve of his ear and back again.

“I...I’m supposed to...to make you.”  Without turning his head, Dean looked away, advertising his shame.

“Are you supposed to hurt me, Dean?  Is that what Dad asked you to do?”

Now Dean did turn his head, breaking the contact between them.

Sam allowed his arm to drop to his side.  “What am I supposed to be sorry for, Dean?  Because that’s what ‘repentance’ is: saying you’re sorry.  That you’re wrong, and you’ll never do it again. So: what is it that I’m supposed to repent, Dean?”

Dean’s chin dropped.  He avoided his brother’s eyes.  “Dad said...he said...you were killing people.”

Sam shifted back enough to allow him to cross his arms over his chest.  “Monsters, Dean. I killed monsters. The ‘family business’.”

Without looking, Dean could tell that his brother had tightened his jaw, that the ridges in his brow had made an appearance.  

“‘Saving people.  Hunting things.’ You remember that, don’t you?”

Dean nodded mutely.

“So, not apologizing for that.  Next?”

“You...you had s-sex...with a..with a demon.”

“And you’ve had sex with half the waitresses from Minneapolis to Houston.  Your point is?”

“They weren’t demons, Sam.”

“Neither was she, before one possessed her.”  Dean’s posture didn’t change, and Sam huffed out an irritated sigh.  “Oh, for Christ’s sake! It’s not like I plan on marrying her! We’re not hunting partners or anything!  She’s just a really, really good lay. Are you honestly going to stand there and tell me that you’d condemn me to Hell for that?”

Dean’s eyes shot to his brother's, pleading.  “No, Sam. It’s not me! I’m not condemning you for anything!”

Sam rolled his eyes.  “Just Daddy’s little messenger.  His good boy. Is that it?”

Dean dropped his eyes, and Sam snorted.

“What else did dear old Dad say, Dean?  C’mon, spit it out. What are my other unforgivable sins?”

 

Denial burned like a beacon, calling out to Dean to just stop now, leave it where it stood.

 

“He said you...you’re d-drinking…” his voice faded to a whisper, “demon blood.”

Sam chuckled and his posture relaxed.  “Well, he’s got good intel. I’ll give him that.”  He reached forward, curling his fingers beneath his brother’s chin.  “Dean? Hey. Look at me, buddy. Look at me.”

Fear and pain and love and hope lived in the reddened eyes that did Sam’s bidding.

“I only did it to try to get to you. To get you out of this place.”

 

_ For me.  He’s going to Hell because of me and for me. _

 

Dean couldn’t breathe.

 

_ I can’t let him.  I can’t. _

 

“Dad’s gonna get me out, okay, Sammy?  He and the angels, they are getting me out, and I’ll be topside and whole, and we can...we can do whatever you want.  We can hunt or you can go back to school and I’ll go with you but I won’t do school, I’ll just… I’ll get a regular job, like a mechanic or something, and I’ll pay for your college, and we’ll both get girlfriends and...and ride off into the freaking sunset together, okay?  You and me: Butch and Sundance. Alright? And you won’t need to drink that shit anymore, or -- or kill anyone. And forget the demon snatch, we’ll find you a -- a stripper or something, someone with whatever skills you’re looking for.” His voice had taken on a panicked edge, and he had cupped his brother’s chin in the webbing of his thumb, keeping their gazes locked.  “Alright, Sammy? ‘S that sound good? All ya gotta do is say you’re sorry. Say you won’t do that stuff no more. Can you do that, Sam? For me?”

His brother’s chest-deep chuckle held a seductive note that Dean tried hard to ignore.

Once again, Sam stepped in, fingers of one overly large hand curling around the base of Dean’s skull, thumb grating pleasantly over the stubble on Dean’s cheek. “What about this, Dean?” His head dipped, lips nearly brushing his brother’s as he breathed, “Can we have this topside? Because I really, really want this.”

Dean pushed back into the warmth of his brother’s palm.  “Sam, no. It’s...it’s incest. It’s wrong.”

“Is it, big brother?  Who else can get this close to you without you tensing up, feeling like you’re under attack?  Huh? All those women you’ve been with over the years, and did any one of them make you feel this safe?”  He eased forward, slotting his knee between Dean’s thighs. “This loved?”

  
  


* * *

  
  


An abrupt change of scenery had Dean standing in front of his father just in time to receive a backhand blow to the face that sent him crashing into the rack.  

 

John followed, and his hand on Dean’s throat forced his son’s head up, a clear target for John’s wrath.

“What the hell was that, Dean?  You’re supposed to cleanse his soul, not fuckin’ soil your own!”

He pulled Dean forward only to slam him back again before turning away, disgusted.  He flicked his wrist and Dean was back on the rack, eyes wide with panic. His frantic “No! Dad!” carried the frost of betrayal.

“Calm down, Dean!  It’s just so you can see what you’re working with.  What your brother has become. Just take a deep breath and watch, and then maybe you’ll understand what you need to be doing here.”

 

Once more he pressed fingertips to Dean’s forehead, and the younger man’s eyes glazed over as the scenes from his brother’s life began to unfold, filling his mind even as they drained his soul.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	30. AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wincest dead ahead!  
> You can read about the flashbacks to rape Dean keeps having in Chapter 20 of "Breathe".

* * *

 

“Sammy.”  

Dean stood in front of the rack that defiled the sanctity of the white room, refusing to acknowledge it and the threat that it implied.  _No way am I putting my brother on that thing.  I don't care what Dad says._

“You...The things you did.  You gotta know they were wrong, Sam.”

Sam shrugged, palms turning out at his sides.  “You were gone, Dean.” He hunched his shoulders as he tucked his hands into his pockets.  “I looked everywhere, and I couldn’t find you.”

Dean took a step forward. “I know, and I’m sorry.”  He placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

Sam immediately shrugged it away to round on his brother.  “You’re sorry? You’re _sorry_ ?  You left me there -- alone, after a whole lifetime of having you or Dad or both there to protect me, to shield me, to keep me from becoming hard and cold like you two both were...to keep me _vulnerable_ !   _His_ little boy, _your_ little brother!  You never let me grow up, never taught me how to...how to protect myself from the demon blood inside of me, and then you _left_!”

“Sam --”  his extended hand was knocked away as his taller brother barrelled forward, slamming Dean’s back into the unforgiving white wall.  

“Mom died trying to protect me from Azazel.   _Dad_ died so that _you_ could protect me from Azazel.”  His hand gripped his brother’s jaw, forcing Dean to meet his eyes.  “And you _left_ me, you selfish _fuck_ .  And now you say _I’m_ the one who needs to repent?”

He ground the side of Dean’s face into the wall as he pushed away from him.   

“Sam --”

His little brother’s fist lashed out.  Dean made no move to protect himself, and the blow caught him on the strongest part of his jaw, knocking him to the ground.

Dean pushed up onto his right hip, eyes pleading.  “I tried, Sam. For three days, I _tried_ to let you go.  And I couldn’t.”   Tears coated his cheeks.

Sam’s inarticulate cry of rage was punctuated by another blow to the face, this one splitting the skin over Dean’s cheekbone.

Sam wrapped his fist in his brother’s hair, pulling the unresisting man upright, leaning in so close that he could almost taste his brother’s blood.  “I’ve _seen_ Heaven, Dean.”

He pulled his foot back, burying the toe of his boot in Dean’s abdomen, then his ribs.  “I could have spent all of eternity in there, with Dad and Mom, but _you_ pulled me out.”  He picked his brother’s head up once more, the next blow breaking the man’s nose, the one following splitting his eyebrow as it crushed his orbital rim.

Dean didn’t try to block the blows or retaliate in any way.  “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry.”

The younger man was gripped in a rage that would have rivalled that of John himself.  He strode around the recumbent form of his brother, foot lashing out to land two vicious strikes, one bruising a kidney, the other fracturing a rib.

Dean writhed, face creased in agony, breath blown from his body.

Sam dropped to his knees, drawing his boot knife.

The one that Dean had given the kid for his twelfth birthday.

“Do you know what I’ve been doing, Dean?”  He turned the blade, watching the play of candle light gild its mirrored surface.  “What I did after you ' _saved'_ me?”

Dean’s jaw worked, trying desperately to draw a breath.  "Yeah, Sam.  Dad showed me.  I saw it all.  I saw it.  That's why I'm here."

Sam ignored him.  “First I tried to make a deal.  Trade _my_ soul for _yours_.”  He slid the blade beneath the collar of his brother’s shirt, splitting the garment neatly down the back.

“No one wanted it.  Unlike yours, _my_ soul, apparently, was _worthless_.”  The tip of the knife caught the edge of a sleeve, and a practiced motion of Sam’s wrist allowed the precision-honed steel to part the cloth all the way to his brother’s neck, leaving a thin line of crimson in its wake.

 

The cotton slipped to the floor, baring Dean’s torso.

 

“I thought about killing myself.”

The little breath he had been able to muster escaped Dean in a desperate negation.

 

Sam stood, placing one large boot on Dean’s shoulder to force his older brother’s face into the floor before kicking his legs out straight.

 

“Then I thought, ‘What would _Dean_ do?  What would _Dad_ do?’”  He dropped,  one knee on the ground beside his brother’s hip, the other pressing into his big brother’s spine.  “So I started drinking.”

 

The blade fit nicely in the gap between Dean’s skin and the waistband of his jeans.

Horror began to build in Dean’s chest.   _He can’t...he’s not…._

 

“Then a _girl_ found me.”  He rotated the blade, smiling in sadistic pleasure as the tough denim succumbed to the insistent press of metal.  “Only she wasn’t a _real_ girl.  She was a demon.”

“Sam...please.”   _He’s not going to...just...he’s just angry…._

Sam went on as if his brother had never spoken.

“She told me what you and Dad had been _hiding_ from me.”  

 

Something both cold and hot uncoiled  in Dean’s gut as the knife separated cloth, revealing more and more of his skin.

 

“She showed me how _powerful_ I could become.”  Sam shifted, the blade now sliding along the back of Dean’s thigh.  “How powerful I could have _always_ been, if not for the selfish insecurity of my father and my big, _strong_ brother.”

 

Dean could no longer hear Sam’s words, lost in his own near-manic dialogue, an aching plea of _No, nonono, please Sam, no_ \--

 

Having cut through the hem on one pant leg, Sam repositioned the knife along the side of the intact half, making sure to snag the underlying boxer briefs as well.

“Sammy _NO_!”  Dean tried to dislodge his brother’s knee and roll over, but Sam merely shifted his weight while slamming the heel of his hand into the back of his brother’s head.  The subsequent impact of Dean’s forehead on the concrete floor would have rendered him unconscious topside.

Here it only sent him into the realm of flashbacks.

 

_he knows what’s next  and this “No!” is panicked, louder, and he arches his back, bucks his hips, desperate to escape, and a cruel hand jerks his head back,_

 

Sam laughed at the pitiful moan that he heard.

“So... I drank demon blood, and I practiced using my powers, and I _evolved_ , Dean.”  The knife had completed its work.  He tucked it back into his boot before standing, fingers tangled in the restructured denim.  His foot rested heavily in the spot his knee had occupied. “And now I get to spend eternity in _Hell_ , indulging every _desire_ , every _fantasy_ I’ve ever entertained. No matter how _sick_ and _depraved_.”  He stood, a sharp tug freeing his brother from his ruined clothing.  

 

With his torso pinned to the ground and his brother’s words shredding his soul, Dean was unable to do more than wrap his arms around his head.   _‘S not happening can’t be  happening not real no Sammy please not this nonononono_

 

“The thing is, _jerk_ ,” Sam began to remove his belt, eyes roaming hungrily over his brother’s nude form, “you could’ve been standing next to me instead of lying on your belly under my boot, sobbing like a little girl.”  He wrapped the buckle end of the belt around his fist, allowing the tongue to brush the skin of his brother’s ass. “If you had said ‘yes’ to Alastair, even _once_ , we’d be partners now.   _Brothers_ again, working together in a _new_ family business: ‘Skinning People.  Hurting Things.’”

 

Leather met flesh with a satisfying _snap_.

 

Dean barely flinched.

 

“Oh, that’s right: you’ve been here almost _thirty years_ .  I bet you can’t even get it up until you’ve had a little tease, right, _Dean_?”  His arm rose and fell three times in quick succession, and three angry red stripes joined the first, standing out vividly on his brother’s pale skin. “Is that what passes for foreplay down here, Dean?”  He stepped back, whipping the man before him with brutal fury, blows falling so hard and fast that it sounded like he was clapping his hands in wild enthusiasm.

 

Drops of blood sprayed like confetti from the wet leather before he was through.

 

Dean trembled, but did not make a sound. 

_It’s okay_

_whip me like Dad used to Sammy_

_you’re right I deserve it_

_just this not the other_

_not --_

_just beat me like family Sam_

_like family_

 

Sam dropped his arm to his side, allowing the lash to slip from his fingers.  “I think you’re ready for me, big brother.” He pulled his shirt off over his head, muscles in his torso rippling like living things beneath his skin.  “You’re certainly wet enough.” He pushed his jeans and boxers down, removing them all in one piece, kicking his ankles free.

 

He stroked his engorged phallus, narrowed eyes on the man lying at his feet.

He dropped to his knees, straddling his brother’s thighs.

Strong fingers wrapped around Dean’s wrists, pulling his older brother’s arms out to the sides as if he were impaled on a crucifix.

Sam’s teeth were clenched, upper lip trembling as he lowered his torso until his chest was resting on Dean’s shoulder blades.

 

“Do you know how long I’ve fantasized about this, Dean?”  The tip of his tongue abraded itself on the short, sharp pelage at the nape of his brother’s neck.  “I’d pretend to fall asleep just so I could listen to you.” He nipped at Dean’s earlobe. “First just the sheets rustling, your hand moving slow and careful, trying to make sure I was really sleeping.”  His lips brushed the back of Dean’s shoulder. “Then you’d swallow hard, and I’d hear your breathing start to staccato.”

 

He reached down, straightening his cock so that it was cradled in the crack of his brother’s ass.

 

“Your hand would start to move faster, and I’d hear it: that soft whisper of skin sliding over skin.”  He moved his hips in imitation, his aching hardness gliding easily over Dean’s blood-slicked flesh.

“I’d hear the bed creak and your breathing would stop.”  He reached down, wrapping his fist around his shaft, and teased the engorged head of his cock between his brother’s ass-cheeks.

“On the best nights you’d have kicked the sheets off, and your back would arch, head pushed into the pillow, each spurt of cum catching the light as it hovered like silver thread before dropping down onto your skin.”

 

The intense heat of his brother’s opening teased the tip of Sam’s cock.

 

“You’d groan, but your mouth was wide open, and I always knew that what you really wanted to do was _scream--_ ”

 

He thrust his way past Dean’s instinctive barrier in one savage thrust.

 

Dean’s head came back as his entire being protested the explosive agony--

 

And despite himself, he screamed.

 

* * *

  


Sam licked his lips, eyes drifting over his brother’s nude form like a warm caress.  “Damn. You. are. _beautiful_.”  He circled around, appreciating the slightly older man from every angle.  “I can see why you’re so popular down here.”

 

“Sam...please.  Don’t do this.”

 

_On the rack I’m on the rack_

_Couldn’t get Sammy to turn_

_I’m sorry so sorry_

_Not again.  Please, not again._

 

The younger Winchester brother threw his head back, his laughter warm and genuine, without a trace of malice.  “Oh, Dean!” The laughter ended, but the humor remained, dancing in his eyes. He stepped in close, the heat of his body mingling with that of his brother’s.  “What happened to telling me, ‘No chick flick moments, Samantha!’ and calling me ‘Princess’ every time I dared show even the slightest _hint_ of emotion?”

He ran a finger through the stream of tears coating his brother’s cheek.

 

Dean turned his face away.   _Not Sam not really Sam he wouldn’t do this Sammy wouldn’t hurt me like this_

 

But the longing Dean felt to have his brother beside him equaled his abhorrence at what was happening, and his mantra rebounded impotently from his conflicted soul.

 

Sam chuckled.  

 

“All those years you acted so superior: big, tough, _manly_ Dean, and thank _goodness_ I had you to look out for me, because I was just a weak little _princess_ , too fragile to be on my own.”  Sam shook his head. “And now here you are, balling like a little girl, and over what?” He slid both hands over his brother’s naked hips.  “Your ass fits so perfectly in my palms.” He angled his pelvis forward, pressing his stiffening erection into Dean’s flaccid one.

 

“Sammy --”  He was crying so hard, the word was nearly incoherent.

_Please I need Sam the real Sam he wouldn’t do this SamSamSamSamSam_

 

Dean’s soul was crumbling, crushed under the combined weight of horror and need.

 

“You’re hanging on to topside values and mores, Dean.”  Sam leaned forward, breath whispering across Dean’s ear.  “This is Hell, big brother, and we will be here _forever_ .  Both of us, trapped here for eternity.  Because of _you_.  Why not enjoy it?”

He dipped his head, capturing the other man’s earlobe, tugging it gently with his teeth.

 

_I’m sorry Sam sorry this is my fault I’m sorry please forgive me_

 

“I know how much you love sex, Dean.”  Sam set up a slow movement of his hips, almost a dance, pressing his cock against his brother’s in an erotic slide.  “I don’t understand why you’re so torn up about this.”

“You sh-should’t even b-be here, Sam-my,” he fought to control his breathing enough to speak.  “I f-failed y-you.”

Sam wrapped his arms around his big brother, pulling the broken man’s face into the crook of his neck.  “Shhhh, shhh. It’s alright, Dean! It’s alright!” He pulled away, cupping his sibling’s face in his palms, forcing the man to look him in the eye.  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! Maybe _I_ shouldn’t be here, but neither should _you_ .  And yet, here we both _are_ .”  He dipped his head lower, catching and holding his brother’s broken gaze. “Thanks to you, we _both_ are.” His smile was tremulous.  “As long as we’re together, everything’s alright.  There’s nothing we can’t handle when we’re together.  Right?”

 

_Maybe he’s right_

_Maybe this is all I can have, all the Sam I get for the rest of eternity_

 

Dean’s chest still heaved, but the motion had slowed.  

 

_This Sam or  no Sam at all_

_Maybe I should take it_

_Maybe if I didn’t fight it, it wouldn’t be so bad_

 

Sam caught his lower lip in his teeth, eyes on Dean’s mouth as he released it slowly.  “So, what do you say we make the most of it?”  

He leaned in, trying to capture his brother’s sweet, full lips with his own, but Dean turned away.

“No, Sam!  No! This isn’t you, this isn’t _us_!  We’re brothers, man!”

 

_It’s not right it’s a sin I can’t_

_But I’m already in Hell.  What difference does it make if I sin now?_

_Sam_

 

Dean's soul howled its anguish.

 

Sam circled his hips, palms curving around his brother’s amazing ass, lips pressed to Dean’s forehead.  “Which just means that we love each other, and that’s how I know that this is going to feel _so_ \--” he squeezed the flesh in his hands --” _damned--_ ” he ground his cock against Dean’s, shuddering at the electric buzz that sweet friction caused --” _good_.”

 

Dean was shaking, sobs wracking his frame.  “ _Please_ , Sam, _please_.  I don’t want this!”

 

_But I do want Sam_

_Need my brother_

 

“You sure about that, Dean?”  He slid his hand between them, long fingers wrapping around both of them, pressing their dicks together as he stroked down them.

“Please, don’t.”  Dean’s voice was a choked whisper.

 

_Miss Sam need Sam_

_Sam Sam SamSamSam_

 

His soul chanted out its need.

 

“Don’t you love me, Dean?”  Sam drew his brother’s cock up, stretching it along his own belly, grinding his forehead against Dean’s as he looked down.  Seeing the glistening head of his brother’s penis brushing against his navel, he groaned. “Oh my god. You are so _big_.”

 

_Yes I love you_

_always loved you Sammy_

_Love you_

_love you_

_don't do this_

_love you_

_please_

 

Dean’s body was betraying him, and nothing he did would make it stop.  “Sammy, _please_.”

“Yes, Dean, yes.”  Sam breathed the words into his big brother’s ear even as he slid around behind him.  He kept a hand on Dean’s now fully erect cock, stroking the way he himself loved to be stroked.

He chewed the back of his brother’s neck, tormenting himself by sliding his dick between Dean’s thighs; not entering him, just enjoying the combined sensations of velvet skin and coarse hair against his engorged and sensitive shaft.

 

_Better than nothing better than no Sam_

_It’s wrong but I need him_

_I want him_

_I shouldn’t want this_

_I’m sorry Sam_

_Sorry sorry sorry_

_Please_

 

Dean was full-out crying, beyond words.

 

“I’m going to fuck you so good, big brother.  Gonna stick my cock in you --” he nudged Dean’s tight opening, and felt his brother tremble --”fuck you so hard, fill you with my cum --”

 

_it shouldn’t feel so good, he can’t remember why but it shouldn’t, and he tries not to let it get him hard, but it does, and his skin is tingling and his heart is racing and he feels the build and he knows it’s coming and it shouldn’t and it is and he can’t and it’s wrong_

 

“Yes!” Dean spit between sobs.

 

“What?”  Sam lifted his head, irises lightening.

 

“Yes, Alastair!  Yes! I’ll t-take your f-fucking b-blade.  Just...p-promise you’ll leave...leave S-Sammy al-alone!”

 

But it wasn’t Alastair that came around to smile at him, Sam’s face slowly melting away.

 

It was Lucifer.

 

“So, you’re ready to take Alastair up on his offer, eh, Dean?”  He laced his fingers behind his back, rocking from toe to heel, obviously pleased with himself.  

“Y-you have to p-promise me,” Dean dug into places inside himself that he didn’t even know existed, pulling every miniscule fragment of his abused soul to bear, “you’ll l-leave Sam alone.”  His voice was gaining strength, bolstered by a brother’s protective rage. “N-no more d-demon blood. No more building up his p-powers. No more visits from incubi.” He glared at the King of Hell.  “And find a different vessel.” He wished there were some way to wipe his face. Hard to look ferocious and deadly with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes; tears and snot running down your chin. “He doesn’t end up here.  That’s my offer. I take up the knife, give up my humanity, become a d-demon --” his voice broke, and he cleared his throat furiously -- “and, when it’s time, Sam...Sam goes to Heaven.”

Lucifer chuckled, bowing his head as he began to pace.  “Well,” and he shifted his eyes to look up at Dean, head still bent into a thinking posture, “I can’t really make promises for Heaven, you know what I’m saying?”

He turned, retracing his steps, finger to his lips as he thought some more.  

He stopped in front of Dean, turning to face him, forefinger raised.  “What I _can_ promise you,” and his digit bobbed with each word, “is that Hell’s minions will stop trying to _recruit_ Sam.”  His hands crossed behind his back, one gripping the wrist of the other.  “It’ll be up to him to figure out the Heaven thing, but we won’t actively work to bring him to Hell.  Fair enough?”

“No more demon’s blood, or sex with that she-demon?  Can you take away his powers?”

“Yes to all of that: no more demon’s blood, no more sexy she-demon, no more powers.”  Lucifer held out a hand. “Shake on it?”

Dean stared down at the outstretched palm, and suddenly his own arm was free.

He met Lucifer’s eyes as their palms slid together.  “If it turns out you’re lying to me, even Hell won’t be big enough to hide you.”  

Lucifer was surprised and a little disgusted at the fear that lapped at him with the iced conviction in the former hunter’s voice.  He washed it back with a cocky grin. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Dean.

 

“Welcome to Hell.”


	31. FADE TO BLACK

* * *

 

"So, what'll it be today, Mr. Winchester?"  After thirty years, Alastair's morning greeting was habitual.

 

Dean's response was not.

There was nothing.  

No pain, no fear, no revulsion.  

No hope.

Just a black void holding the ashes of his soul.

 

“I have someone here, Dean.  A present for you on this, the anniversary of your thirtieth year in hell.  You have now officially been here longer than you existed topside.”

 

Dean could hear the girl weeping.

 

He didn’t look up.

 

Ice water sluiced over him, and the harsh cold forced him to jerk his head up, gasping.  The demon before him smiled. “That was your shower for the day, Dean. Need to freshen up for your date.”

He’d kept his eyes closed, and now he allowed his chin to drop back to his chest.

Dean wasn’t surprised when the blade slammed into him, sliding through the muscles in his thigh until it struck bone.  “Open your eyes, Dean, or I’ll remove your eyelids.” Alastair’s rancid breath scalded his cheek.

 

He opened his eyes.

 

The dark-haired girl on the rack before him was the picture of terrified innocence.  White cotton blouse buttoned to a modest level, faded jeans that fit comfortably, cowboy boots that were made for work, not show...and tear-filled brown eyes that begged Dean to save her.

“She’s a virgin, Dean.  Not just a ‘this is her first day in Hell’ type of virgin, and not even a ‘I swear I don’t know  how I got pregnant, Joseph’ virgin: Emily is the real deal.” Alastair trailed a finger down her cheek, wetting his nail with her tears.  “Do you know how rare actual, physical virgins are in  _ Hell _ , Dean?”  He licked his lips and his clothes were gone. The demon’s monstrously large phallus dominated the room, engorged and pulsing as it strained for the girl like a living entity.  

She shrieked, struggling against her bonds.

Alastair moaned.  The viscous liquid that leaked from the tip of his caricature of a penis dripped to the floor.

Smoke curled from the pit that single drop melted into the stone.

 

“You’re lying.”  Dean’s voice was devoid of emotion.

 

“Do you remember me telling you about suicides, Dean?”  Alastair gripped the girl’s wrist, turning it to display the long, jagged scar there.  “This attempt wasn’t successful, so she took her daddy’s pills.” He caressed her cheek once more, and the girl cringed away from the touch.  “Threw away God’s gift, like it didn’t even matter. Didn’t trust Him to save her.” He shook his head in a parody of sorrow. “Such a bad, bad girl.”

 

A coal glowed in the ashes of his soul.  “Leave her alone.”

 

Alastair turned, holding his razor aloft.  “Oh, you know I can’t, Dean. She’s committed a cardinal sin.  There’s a price to be paid.” He ran one forefinger down the blade lovingly.  “I get to torture her. Fuck her. Make her scream.” He licked the blade. “I wonder if she’ll be as tight as you were that first time, Dean.  If her screams will be as intoxicating as yours always are.”

“It’s not right.  She doesn’t deserve this.”

Alastair was in his face, razor nestled in the juncture between Dean’s scrotum and his thigh.  “Take it up with the management, honey. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”

He drew the blade up, a thin line of fire marking its path.  “But it doesn’t have to be me, Dean. It’s your anniversary, and you made a deal with  Lucifer himself. This could be your gift: one more chance to save an  _ innocent  _ damsel from a  _ horrible  _ monster.  Your last humanitarian act before you go demon.”  His voice dripped sarcasm. “How many chances do you think you’ll have to do  _ that  _ in Hell, Dean Winchester?”

 

_ Take up his blade.   _

_ Get off the rack. _

_ I said I would. _

 

_ But this girl. _

 

_ I can’t. _

 

It was the first time that Alastair had ever sensed indecision from his favorite toy.

“No matter,” he sang, returning his attention to the girl.  “I was actually hoping that you  _ wouldn’t  _ say ‘yes’.”  He popped the button on the girl’s jeans, smiling at her resultant hysteria.

“No no no!  Please, please, I’ll do anything, I’m sorry, please!”

 

Dean closed his eyes.

 

_ It’s not real.  Sam wasn’t real, Dad wasn’t real, this girl is not real. _

 

He tried to ignore the sound of tearing cloth.

 

“Please please please!  Oh, God, please, don’t!”

 

_ Dean’s frantic “Wait!”  was followed by a shocked scream as Alastair thrust into him viciously. _

_ The hunter’s cry was cut off abruptly as the improbable organ that Alastair had conjured             _

_ buried itself in Dean’s body with enough force to knock the wind out of him. _

_ Alastair alternated between thrusts so powerful they crushed organs and withdrawing so slowly that tissue shredded along the way. _

 

“Stop.”  His soul rose up, threatening to choke him.  “Alastair.  _ Stop _ .”

Alastair took a moment to force the look of triumph from his face before turning, razor in hand.  “Yes, Dean?”

“I’ll do it.  I’ll start her.”

 

Fire burned coldly where his soul had been.

  
  


* * *

 

 

 

“If I do this, I’m doing it  _ my  _ way, alright?”  His voice was granite. “And  _ you  _ don’t get to be here.  No spectators.”

Alastair chuckled.  “Of course, Dean. Whatever you say.”  He could not keep the victory from his eyes as he placed his razor reverently in the hunter’s palm.  “I’ll be right outside. Just let me know when you’re done.”

  
  


Dean waited until the demon had left them before he crossed the room, razor hidden at his side.

 

The girl’s eyes dominated her face, swimming in terror.

 

He stopped at a comfortable distance, making no attempt to touch her.

“Emily?  Is that your name?”  

She nodded hesitantly.

“I’m Dean.  I’ve been here -- “ his voice caught -- “I’ve been here a long time, but I still remember what that first day was like.”  He looked away, dropping his gaze to the floor. “There will be more days, and they’ll be bad. Really bad. But I...I can make this first day….not as bad as it could be.”

He swallowed, looking at the blade in  his hand. “I wish I could save you….”

Her crying had slowed.  “Do you...do you have to….”

“Rape you?”  His voice was harsh with the bitterness of self-recrimination.  “If  _ I _ don’t,  _ he  _ will.”

Fresh tears flowed unchecked down her reddened cheeks.  “I...I’ve never…”

“Yeah, I know.”   _ But my dick won’t turn into a monster, and my cum won’t melt your insides.  _  “I’ll be gentle.  I promise.”

She sobbed, but didn’t object.  

He lifted the razor, and she shuddered.

He cut through the bindings on each wrist.

A thin line of perfectly spaced scars decorated her right forearm.  He ran his thumb over them, expression inquisitive.

“I...it’s called ‘cutting’.  I do it -- did it -- when it hurt too much.  You know,” she rolled her free hand toward her chest, “inside.”

He nodded, ball of his thumb carressing the evidence of her struggle to overcome what he knew had been overwhelming psychological pain.  “Did it help?”

Her huffed response was part sob, part laugh.  “Some. Not enough, apparently.”

He raised the blade to her wrist.  The green eyes that locked on hers conveyed a knowledge and understanding that cut to the bone.  “May I?”

She nodded.  “Of course.”

They both watched intently as he  brought the razor to her scars. His eyes shot to hers as the first line of crimson marred her soft, white skin.  Her smile was encouraging.

Five neat, straight lines graced her flesh.  He dropped the blade, raising her wrist to his lips, and kissed away the blood.  “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.  It didn’t hurt.”

“No.  I mean I’m sorry that you did this.  That you were so messed up you felt like you had to.”

He crouched at her feet, retrieving the razor to free her legs.  When he stood, she collapsed against him, holding him tightly.

“If I had known  _ you _ , maybe I wouldn’t have.”

He returned her embrace, cheek nestled into soft, fragrant hair.  “I’m sorry I have to -- “ He made a vague gesture, and a bed appeared behind him.

_ Alastair.  Bastard’s not supposed to be watching. _

“It’s okay.  Really: it’s okay.”

 

The bed looked like a thrift shop reject: rusted metal frame, broken down mattress, stained sheets.  Still, it was better than the cold, wet floor.

Dean turned his back, allowing Emily to remove her clothing and position herself as she wanted.

He turned to find her lying on her back, arms held stiffly at her sides, ankles touching but not intertwined.  His breath caught at his first sight of her ivory skin, breasts small but firm, virginal cleft hidden beneath a screen of thick, curling, black hair.

He’d been nude for as long as she’d known him, and he dropped to his knees beside the bed, trying to hide the physical effect that she had on him.

“You’re beautiful.”  His voice was reverent.

Her eyes shot to his face, and she bit her lip at the desire and awe that she read there as his gaze swept her body, returning at last to capture her stare.  “May I?”

She nodded, trying not to let her tears fall, reminding herself that it could be worse.  He was a stranger, and she didn’t want this, but it could be so much worse.

He eased onto the bed beside her, lying on his side, careful not to allow his straining erection to touch her.  He kept his eyes on her face as he carded his fingers through her hair, teasing around the shell of her ear before tracing her eyebrow gently.

He looked utterly fascinated, as if she were the first female he had ever seen, and she wondered how long he had been in this place.

What he had been through.

The backs of his fingers whispered along her jawline, and he licked his full lips.  

 

“Can I kiss you?”

 

His voice was hoarse, and for some reason, that made her spine tingle.

“Yes.”

She’d been kissed before, but this soft heat, this gentle probing from his tongue, the jolt of pleasure as he licked the roof of her mouth: this was all new.

Her hand came up of its own accord, palm gliding over a ridge of muscle on his side, and she moaned.

He was trembling.

The kiss grew more heated, hungry, and he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, teasing it with his tongue.  He broke away as he brought his hand to her waist, cupping the curve with his palm, thumb grazing the last rib.  

 

“May I?”

 

She nodded, fear living in her chest.

He braced himself on one elbow, eyes locked on her face as his left hand explored her body, ghosting over skin.

She was tingling and breathless before he even got to her breasts, and she wanted to beg him to touch her there, but couldn’t force the words from her throat.

He seemed to know, and as his warm, calloused palm engulfed her, squeezing gently, he closed his eyes.  “God, you feel good.”

He pinched her nipple, twisting carefully, and she cried out, digging her fingers into his back.

He released that tender nub, cradling her flesh tenderly.  “Did that hurt?”

The concern in his voice brought fresh tears, but she laughed.  “No.  _ God  _ no.”

He chuckled, dropping his head to tease her lip back into his mouth, licking it thoroughly.  At the same time he repeated the earlier motion of his fingers on her nipple, and she whined, arching up into him.

Now she felt his hard length branding her thigh, and eagerness augmented her fear.

 

“May I?”

 

She wasn’t sure what he was asking, but knew she would deny him nothing.

At her nod, he dipped his head, teeth closing around her nipple, and her fingers fisted in his hair as her breath stuttered in her chest.

Each flick of his tongue over the trapped nub sent an electric bolt of pleasure straight to her core.  He released that breast, turning his attention to the other, and her body begged him to move lower, to find her and stroke her and fill her and end this torment.

She was mindless as she spread her legs, and his hand slipped down, fingertips discovering the moisture coating her inner thigh, and he groaned, voice pained.  “Emily….”

She heard his plea, and answered with her own: “Please, Dean.   _ Please _ .”

His mouth returned to hers, now hot, wet, and nearly frantic with desire.  He cupped her mons in his palm, and she thrust against him, whining around his tongue.  His fingertips stroked through dampness and curls, and she keened into his mouth. One finger dipped in, parting velvet folds, collecting her lust, drawing it up to the engorged nub of her clit, and she arched her back on a scream.

He pushed down, face dipping below her waist, skilled tongue replacing his fingers, laving, probing, teasing, and she gripped his hair with both hands, thighs tightening on his skull, torso curling as he strummed her, sending jolt after jolt of electric pleasure coursing through her, a constant “please please please” pouring down on him, seemingly unheard --

And then he covered her with his body, eyes locked on her face, hips snugged between her thighs. 

 

“May I?” 

 

and his voice was broken, shame and lust splintering together, but she was lost, needing something so badly, and she didn’t even know what, but  _ please, oh God, please _ \--

He pressed into her, trying to be slow, be gentle, but she gripped his hips, fingers biting into him, thighs wrapping around him.  “Please! Need -- “

He groaned, head falling to her shoulder, and thrust past her barrier, burying himself in her wet heat.

 

She cried out at a sharp pain that quickly faded to a pleasant warmth.

 

Then he moved onto his knees, her hips resting on his thighs, and began to stroke her with his cock, eyes on her face the whole time.

Not seeing what he wanted to see, he pulled out, wrapped his arms around her thighs from beneath, and pulled her to the edge of the bed.  “There’s an angle…”

He stood between her legs, expression intent as he slid two fingers into her, seeking, stroking.

Just as she was about to beg him to put his cock back inside of her, he pressed against something that sent an intense wave of pleasure through her all the way to her bones, and she gasped.  “What --”

He held his lip between his teeth, pupils so wide the green of each iris was reduced to shadow.

He gripped his shaft with one hand, sliding his head in along those two questing fingers, replacing them.

His head stroked along swollen flesh housing a tight bundle of nerves, and her whole body trembled. “Ooo-ooo--hhh!”

He closed his eyes, tilting his head back, tendons standing out as he fought for control.

He found it, returning his focus to Emily’s face, tip of his tongue resting on his lower lip, concentration beading in the sweat on his brow as he drove the head of his cock into her g-spot 

once, 

twice, 

three times.

 

He felt her orgasm at the same time that he heard it, the combination shuddering down his spine, setting him on fire.

When her spasms ended he collapsed forward, rolling with her in his arms, still sheathed inside of her, pressing her close as he rode out the aftershocks of an intense orgasm.

 

He came back to himself with the feel of her tears scalding his neck.

 

His soul withered.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, stroking her hair.

Tears ran down the side of  his face, mingling with hers.

“No.”  she shook her head against him.  “It’s not...this was...It’s just…”  Her voice hitched in her chest, and he pulled her in tighter against his.  “Tomorrow….”

“I’m sorry.  I wish I could give you that, too.  Maybe...If I talk to Alastair…”  _  if I promise to let him put me back on the rack, me instead of Emily… _

 

As if he had heard, the demon materialized at the foot of their bed.

 

Dean rolled, shielding Emily’s nakedness from Alastair’s greedy eyes.

“I said no spectators.”  All of the hunter’s former hatred and rage were back.

Alastair chuckled.  “And I said you get to start her, Dean, not finish her.”  He licked his lips. “It’s my turn.”

Dean turned to Emily.  He leaned down to kiss her, retrieving the razor from the floor as he did so.

 

“I can give you one day,” he whispered against her lips.  “I’m sorry.”

 

He drew the blade across her throat.

 

* * *

  
  


Alastair’s laughter was unnecessarily cruel.  “Dean, Dean, Dean. You know there’s still tomorrow.  And the next day. And the next after that.” He gestured at the bloodied razor clenched tightly in the hunter’s fist.  “And you’ve got my blade. That means you get to start a brand new soul tomorrow. And then another. And a new one the day after that.”

 

Dean drew the knife across his own throat, the move so powerfully incisive that he separated tissue all the way down to his spine.

 

His body fell, landing on Emily’s, their blood mingling to dye the stained sheets crimson.


	32. WHIPLASH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For steeleye1. More to come, because your idea hit all the right nerves.

* * *

 

“Rise and shine, sleepy head!  It’s a brand, new day!”

Dean groaned into his pillow. _S’posed t’be on the rack. Or did I just dream that?  Did I dream Hell?_

He closed his eyes more tightly, willing that to be true.

“Come on, now, Dean.  You made a bargain, remember?  One soul. Every morning you start one teeny, weeny little soul.  The rest of the day is yours.” Alastair clapped his hands. “Time’s a wastin’, Dean-o!”

 

_Not dreams.  Sam, Ruby, Emily: it was all real._

 

He had his arms buried beneath the pillow, a position he hadn’t slept in for a very long time.  He curled his fingers into fists.

“Where’s Emily?”

 

Even as the words left his mouth, he wasn’t certain that he wanted to hear the answer.

 

“Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little head about _her_ , Dean.  We’re taking _real_ good care of her.”

He made no effort to stop the tears from wetting his pillow. _I’m so sorry, Emily.  So sorry._

“Now, come on, Dean!”  Alastair snapped his fingers and the blankets disappeared, leaving his newest protege bare and shivering.  The demon’s eyes roamed over the hunter’s beautifully sculpted body, and his fingers twitched with the memory of what it felt like to caress so much firm flesh.  “Or I could just crawl in there with you -- “

“I’m up!” He rolled out of bed on the side away from Alastair, lip lifted in a snarl.  “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Alastair chuckled, holding out his favorite blade.  “Take my razor, do as you’re told, and I promise, I won’t lay a hand on you.  Not even the tiniest sliver of one little fingernail.”  His smile turned salacious.  "Unless, of course, you ask me to."

 

Dean’s tongue flicked out, wetting his lips before he swallowed audibly.  “I need clothes.”

 

The demon waved a hand irritably, and his toy was clothed: jeans, t-shirt, flannel, boots.

Classic hunter garb.

Dean blinked, running his hands over the soft flannel. “Th -- “ _Jesus.  Can’t believe I damn-near thanked the asshole._  “That’s better.”

 

Alastair proffered the razor once more.

 

Dean took it, eyes shifting uneasily.

 

“Relax, Dean.  This guy beat his grandmother to death with a baseball bat because she caught him stealing money from her purse.  He deserves whatever you give him. Now go.”

 

Alastair snapped his fingers, and they were in front of the rack.

 

* * *

 

Dean looked around: damp stone walls, rancid candles, muffled screams from outside the room.

 

It was the same rack that he had been on.

 

The dark-haired man strapped to it was thin, pale, with an anemic growth of coarse hair on his chest and at his groin.

Small scabs and circular lesions dotted his arms.

“What are you s’posed to be?  Some kinda lumberjack?”

Dean raised an eyebrow.  “What are you supposed to be?  Some kind of drug addict?”

The tweaker’s eyes widened.  “You got any? Meth’s my juice, but I’ll take just about anything.  And this is Hell! There’s gotta be a ton of the shit down here, right?”

Dean turned to Alastair.  “What did you say he did?”

The scrawny man cackled.  “My grandma was a religious ol’ bitch.  Wouldn’t gimme any money, even though she’s rich.  I took a baseball bat to her. Stupid bitch. It was her fault!  If she’d a gimme the combination to her safe like I asked, it never woulda happened!”

 

Dean looked down at the blade in his hand.  He lifted his eyes, looking at Alastair from beneath his brows.  “Can I get a --”

 

The blade had become a baseball bat.

 

Wrapped with barbed wire.

 

Dean smiled, eyes feral.

 

The prick in front of him started begging before Dean even swung the bat.

The first blow shattered the kid’s knee, and Dean grimaced.

The second came with a satisfying crunch as ribs gave way, and suddenly every horrific thing that had been done to him came back, memories washing over him in waves, and it was Alastair he saw on that rack, Alastair taunting him, laughing at him, talking about all of the plans he had for Dean.  For Sam.

With each swing of the bat, each crunch of bone, each spray of blood, Dean’s anger grew.

 

By the time he dropped the weapon, his screams had grown louder than his victim’s.

  


* * *

 

 

“Well, now, Dean, I have to say, that was quite masterful!  I did not expect that of you. Not this early in the game, at any rate.”

“I need a shower.”  He snarled the words, refusing to look the demon in the eye.

“As you wish.”

 

Alastair snapped his fingers, and Dean found himself in a suite of rooms.

 

* * *

 

He hung  his head, watching the steaming water turn from red to pink to clear as it cascaded over his body.   _Not my blood.  For once, it’s not my blood._

 

The young man’s screams came back to him.

The way it felt to crush the kid’s bones.

The copper and piss smell of his fear.

 

The water scalded him, and Dean let it.

  


* * *

 

 

He stepped out into the hallway cautiously, having no idea what to expect.

Alastair appeared.

“Are you ready for your first meal in three decades, Dean?”

Haunted green eyes stared back at him.

“Well, Mr. Winchester?  What’ll it be?”

“The rack.”  Dean turned, peeling his shirts off, letting them drop to the floor.  “Put me back on the rack.”

Alastair chuckled.  “As much as I would like that -- and believe me, I really would -- that was not part of the deal, Dean.”  He scrutinized his new apprentice closely. “A little buyer’s remorse there, Mr. Winchester?”

 

_He screamed and bones snapped and he begged_

_And I liked it_

_I fucking liked it._

 

“What do you _really_ want, Dean?”

Anticipation of relief tangled through with dread roughened the young man’s voice, but his answer was clear:  

 

“Make me scream.”

  


* * *

 

 

“Would you like a safe word, Dean?”  Alastair’s eyes glinted with either anticipation or sadistic humor.  

Dean couldn’t tell if the demon was really asking, or if he was being sarcastic.

He decided he didn’t care.  

“Fuck you, Alastair.  This isn’t some BDSM scene.  We aren’t having sex here. Just get on with it.”

“Oh, we’re not?”  Alastair snapped his fingers, and Dean was nude.  “You asked me to make you scream. You didn’t put any limits on how I accomplish that.”

 

Dean trembled.  

 

_Don’t rape me_

_don’t fucking rape me_

_You deserve whatever  he decides to dish out, you sick fuck_

 

Dean stayed quiet.

 

“There’s a bar above your head.  Hold onto it. The minute you let go, your fun is over and mine begins.  Got it?”

Keeping his eyes on the floor, Dean reached up.  His fingers contacted cool, smooth metal. He found he had to stand on tiptoe to grip it firmly.  “Yeah, I got it.”

 

Without warning a wide leather strap snapped across Dean’s groin, its sharp burn making him hiss.

“The correct answer is ‘Yes, sir’.”

 

With his head  hanging, Dean could see the long, crimson rectangle spreading from one ridged hipbone to the next, cutting across the upper  half of his penis.

The burn faded to a warm sting.

The ache inside of him eased.

 

_Yeah.  Need more._

 

As if reading his mind, Alastair struck again, aiming slightly lower.

This time the blow caught the more sensitive glans, and Dean jerked his hips away, twisting as he brought one thigh up to cover himself.  “Yes, sir!” He spat the words reflexively, but the tone was less than submissive.

Alastair chuckled. “I am going to enjoy this so, so much.”  He snapped his fingers, adding a blindfold. “I want you to concentrate on what you’re feeling, Dean.  Nothing else exists for you right now…. in this moment…. except your body….and the things that I do to it.”

 

Dean shuddered.

The initial exquisite pain that had made him feel like the head of his cock was on fire had faded.  Now it felt raw, almost sunburned.

The skin higher up tingled.

The flesh over his hip bones glowed.

 

Dean felt the change in air pressure as Alastair stepped in closer to him, and he tensed, expecting pain.

Sharp nails spread, scraping along the marks left by biting leather, and shocks of pleasure shot through him.

 

_Jesus.  I’m getting hard._

_What the fuck?_

 

The fingers left him.

 

He strained into his blindness, needing to know where Alastair was.  What he was doing.

 

“You know, Dean --”

 

The voice came from behind him, and Dean stiffened, breath too tight in his chest.

 

“The human body is a strange and wonderful thing.”

The crisp ‘snap’ registered in Dean’s brain a fraction of second before a tongue of fire snaked across the center of his bare ass.

 

“Did you know that there are only three basic sensory receptors in human skin?”

 

The tingle in his ass somehow intensified what he was feeling in his dick.

“I’m not here for a damned science class, Ally.  Just fucking _beat_ me, alright?”

 

Dean registered the meaning in Alastair’s chuckle just before the lash burned him: ass, thighs, shoulders, behind his knees, back to his ass.

 

Dean held his breath through all of it, muscles straining as he gripped the bar, determined not to cry out.

 

_Jesus christ.  Why did I ask for this?_

 

But he wasn’t ready for it to end.

 

“You can feel changes in temperature.”  Alastair had moved in front of him again, and the application of something scalding to Dean’s left nipple elicited a startled yelp from the hunter.

 

“And there are mechanoreceptors that let you feel things like pressure.”  He cupped Dean’s testicles, squeezing gently.

 

Dean’s heart rate accelerated.  _Not my balls please don't crush my nuts_

 

“Or pushing and pulling.”  His hand moved, gripping Dean’s semi-erect penis, and began stroking.

 

Relief amplified pleasure and his dick jumped to attention.  “This is not what I asked for, Alastair.”  Thirty years of torture had not scrubbed the menace from his voice.

 

“We’re getting to that, Dean.  Just be patient.” That hand continued its ministrations while the other slipped behind Dean, re-awakening the smoldering fire on his ass as the demon’s rough palm abraded raw flesh.  “And of course there are the pain receptors, which really just pick up on different chemicals.”

 

He squeezed the firm globe of his toy’s ass cheek, and Dean’s cock surged.

 

“Those nerve endings all get triggered when certain things happen to your body, Dean.”

 

The lash fell again, this time across the young man’s lower abdomen, the inside of one thigh, then both nipples.

 

“The ratios help your brain decide whether you feel heat -- “

 

Scalding liquid ran down his side, and Dean jerked, trying to get away from it.

 

“-- or cold -- “

 

Something that felt like ice water slapped against his scrotum, and Dean hissed, twisting his hips.

 

“-- an uncomfortable degree of pressure --”

 

His hand closed over that freshly cooled skin, and he squeezed Dean’s testicles hard enough to force bile up the hunter’s throat.  Dean groaned, trying to curl in on himself without releasing his grip on the bar.

 

“-- or a more pleasant degree.”  He went back to stroking Dean’s now flaccid cock.

 

“And those _chemical_ receptors?  Well, they are never triggered all by themselves.”  A pinching sensation on Dean’s right nipple was added to the sting of his stripes, the ache in his abused testicles, and the growing hum of the erection that Alastair was coaxing back out of him.  “Those chemicals are released from tissues and cells when they are heated or cooled or pressed or rubbed.”

 

_Feels so good why does this feel so good_

 

Alastair’s hand snapped down on the reddened skin of Dean’s ass, and a jolt of ecstasy shot through to his groin, making him moan.

 

Alastair continued his lecture, ignoring the slick of precum on his hand.  “The most interesting part of all of this, though, is that your brain has to interpret this complicated mix of signals, and figure out whether it is indeed feeling pain --”

 

Something sharp closed on the nipple that had been scalded earlier, and Dean cried out.

 

“Or pleasure.”

 

His mouth closed over Dean’s erection -- _soft wet sucking heat_ \-- and the man groaned, feeling a spike of bliss set out from his groin to infect each abused section of skin until he was tingling and flushed, like all of his body was on the brink of orgasm --

 

Alastair pulled away.

 

Dean sagged, panting.

 

“You asked me to make you scream, Dean --”

“I meant ‘hurt me’, you sick fuck --”

“You meant ‘punish me’, Dean.”  Alastair was close again, breath hot and eager on the side of Dean’s face.  “But I deserve a reward for what you did today. So I’m going to give us both, Dean.  I’m going to use your body against you in a way that is both pleasure and pain. You don’t want it, but you won’t be able to stop it, and the orgasm that comes, that mix of agony and ecstasy that tears the screams you are looking for right out of your lungs, that will be your punishment -- and my reward.”

 

Tears soaked the blindfold.

 

 _Yes, sir_.

 

* * *

  


He hung from his tenuous grip on the bar, legs too weak to support him.  

He was painted with bloody stripes from his neck to his knees -- on both sides.

His body had been shuddering continuously for hours.

He had cum so many times he had lost count, each one an exquisite agony that intensified his self-loathing.

 

But he hadn’t screamed.

 

Alastair knelt, looking up into the man’s face.  “Is it enough?”

 

“Yeah,” came the toneless rasp, “for now.”

 

The bar slid from his sweat-slick fingers.

 

Alastair caught him before he could hit the floor.

 

“My turn.”  Hot, sulfuric breath in his ear, in his nose, and they were on a bed, sheets soft, mattress just firm enough, and when Alastair was pressed to him, demon’s chest tight against hunter’s back, Dean tensed, expecting burning-pounding agony --

 

but it never came.

 

Instead Alastair positioned him carefully, knees tucked under his body, Alastair’s arm across his chest, and he entered Dean with a steady but undemanding press, fingers twisting a hypersensitive nipple before sliding down to fist around the cock that Alastair had learned so well how to control over the past thirty years --

 

_Feels good_

_Can’t feel so good_

 

And the thing that had always horrified Dean in the past, had burned like fire at the same time that it doubled him over like a kick to  the balls --

 

_Oh my god what is that_

_What’s he hitting_

_Shit_

_Fuck_

_So good_

_Feels so good_

 

\-- it was the opposite of those things, the most intense and mind-numbing pleasure he had ever felt.

 

Dean cried when he came.

  



	33. PHANTOM LORD

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I posted a shorter version of this a few days ago, and steeleye1 was both kind and courageous enough to send me an e-mail, pointing out some HUGE flaws in that version. On her advice I revised this, and I've gotta say, I'm glad that I did. Thank you, steeleye1, and I hope I did your suggestions justice.

* * *

 

“Rise and shine, Dean-o!  It’s a brand new day!”

 

_ Fuckin’ Alastair. _

“Shut the fuck up, man.  I told you: not a morning person.”

An invisible force tore the sleep-soft hunter from his bed, flinging him through the air to impact a wall, iron sconce digging brutally into his back.

Even knowing there would be consequences for his smart mouth, Dean was startled by the ferocity of Alastair’s reaction.

He was pinned to the wall and could only watch as the demon crossed to him in an instantaneous flickering motion, skeletal hand hard and unforgiving on Dean’s windpipe.

 

Dean’s eyes glittered with satisfaction.

 

Alastair threw  him to the ground, disgusted.  “Get dressed. There’s a soul waiting for you.”

 

Dean pushed himself to his feet, reaching back to examine his fresh wound. He ignored the way his dick pulsed when he probed the bone-deep bruise over his ribs.

“Just put me on the rack again, Ally.  You know you want to.”

The demon spun, black eyes a sure sign that he was nearly out of control.  One hand returned to the hunter’s throat while the other landed with crushing force on the man’s testicles.  Alastair lifted his toy off of his feet and tossed him across the room.

Dean did not feel the impact or notice the sandpaper scrape of rough stone as he slid down the wall to curl around himself, vomiting bile, his entire being focused on surviving the agony that stabbed out from his groin.

Alastair dropped to his knees, using the man’s  hair to wrench his head back. “Look at me, Dean.”

The hunter responded with a choking moan.

Alastair slapped his face, then shook him. “Look. At. Me.”

Dean blinked past the glue of his tears, past the smothering agony that demanded his attention, past the overwhelming urge to just close his eyes forever.

The demon waited until awareness returned to the green orbs that he so loved to redden with tears.  “I know what you are trying to do, Dean, and it won’t work. You made an agreement. You will not go back on the rack, ever.”  He threw the man’s head away. “Now man up, Dean Winchester. I have big plans for you today.”

 

He smiled as he strode from the room. The man’s nearly inaudible sobs were the sweetest music that Alastair had ever heard.

 

* * *

 

Dean stood beside Alastair, by training placing himself just within arm’s reach of his master, and waited.

Their soul today was a copper-haired beauty with green eyes and porcelain skin.

She had already been stripped bare, but judging by the arch in her back and the tilt of her chin, she was proud of the vision she presented.

The ache in his balls didn’t stop Dean’s cock from stirring itself awake.

He ignored it.

“What’s she here for?”   _ Jesus.  I sound like I’ve been gargling with battery acid.   _

Alastair raised his eyebrows to the woman, inviting her to speak.

“I am a priestess of the Great Goddess.”

 

Dean waited.

 

She offered a seductive smile and a nearly motionless invitation with her hips.

Dean glanced to Alastair, but the smug grin on his master’s face provided no illumination.

“Which one?” Dean prompted, honestly curious.  “There are a ton of them, and they all think they’re great.”

Alastair snorted laughter --

_ I wasn’t trying to be funny -- _

And the woman narrowed her eyes.

Alastair leaned over, speaking through the side of his mouth.  “It’s a made up religion. They didn’t choose a goddess.” He straightened again, hands folded together over his groin.

Dean nodded.  “Ah. Dumb move.  A real goddess probably would’ve claimed you.”

Her disdainful head movement would have sent those shimmering locks over her shoulder if the woman had not been so tightly bound.  

“You got a name?” 

Alastair rolled his eyes at this failure on the part of his apprentice --  _ you only make it harder on yourself, Dean  _ \-- but the humanity had not been rung from him yet, and Dean still needed to know.

“You may call me Aza-rah.”

Dean snorted.  “You make that up, too?”

For the first time her haughtiness failed her, and Dean knew that he was right.

“You hurt anybody, Aza-rah?”

Confidence returned as she dipped her head to gaze at him through lowered lashes.  “Only those that begged me to.”

Dean sighed.  He turned to his master, and the words “Look, Alastair, I can’t -- “ barely left his lips before the demon turned to smoke and streaked towards the hunter’s face.

 

A vision of Sammy, head back, throat stretched, screaming around the black column of Meg that rushed out of him flickered through Dean’s consciousness.  He’d seen demons leave a vessel, but had never seen one enter. 

 

His hands rose instinctively to cover his face.  Lips clamped tightly over gritted teeth, and he pushed air out through his nose, hoping to repel smoke the way a swimmer repels water.  

The living smog wrapped itself around Dean’s head, and he could almost hear Alastair’s sibilant lisp, feel the demon’s breath against his ear.  “No point in fighting it, boy. You’re in my playhouse. In here, I always get what I want.”

Vapor teased at his lips like the feet of questing insects, and an invisible vice tightened inexorably on the hinges of his jaw.  

 

_ He’ll possess me, and it’ll be like Meg in Sam.  He’ll make me… _

A picture imprinted itself on Dean’s soul:  this woman -- who was foolish, maybe, but not sadistic.  Not evil -- face streaked with blood and tears, entrails falling out onto the ground.  His hand holding the blade that had mutilated her.

 

He pulled his head back, face contorting with the effort of denying the demon entrance.

The vice tightened and discomfort blossomed into tear-inducing agony.

 

_ Not gonna possess me.  You can destroy my body, but you can’t fucking take it over. _

 

Dean’s will was strong, but crushed muscles failed, and his jaw dropped open.

Alastair’s breath tickled his ear in a satisfied chuckle.  “Remember the first time I made you swallow my cock, Dean? Well, hold your breath, because this time, you’re taking _all_ of me.”

The gaseous form of the demon as it entered Dean’s mouth still somehow felt like skull and tasted like unwashed hair as it thrust itself in pulsing strokes down the hunter’s throat.

Dean dropped to his knees, involuntary tears flushing his eyes as his hands clawed uselessly at the thick vapor.  He gagged and the thing seemed to swell, choking him.

Dean leaned back, unable to breathe around the pollution of the demon’s head, and felt the serpentine body twine around him, holding him in place as the tail of the deconstructed demon curled between his legs, stroking him in learned perfection.

On the verge of suffocation, agony at a crescendo, the brain’s response is to shut down the fear center and dump endorphins -- the body’s morphine -- into the system.  The basketball-sized column of smoke shredding Dean’s esophagus while it crushed his windpipe exerted that effect, and he quit fighting as a sense of peace and bliss washed over him.  Combined with the erotic glide and press of sentient smoke, Dean’s primitive brain could think of only one command to issue:  _ Cum.  Cum hard. Do it now. _

 

His mouth stretched wider, coughing morphed into smothered moans as his arms spread to the sides, fingers clawing at nothing while muscles contracted in his pelvis, low and deep, spreading down through his thighs and up to his chest and

_ Oh, god! _

His eyes rolled back and his body convulsed with the rhythmic waves of ecstasy that flooded him.

It continued as the smokey serpent undulated its way into Dean’s body, tail tip at last disappearing between full lips gone slack with paralyzing bliss.  His throat opened as the demon disappeared, and air flowed into his lungs, filling him, drawing breath into his oxygen-starved tissues. 

 

Dean’s paralysis broke, and he collapsed onto his side, trembling hard.

 

* * *

 

 

It was Alastair that brought them to his feet.

 

Alastair, filling and violating him, a rape more complete than any Dean had endured thus far.

 

_ I have no control.   _

_ I’m here but not here.   _

_ I _ _ have to watch it all. I can’t stop it, can’t control it.  My body, but not mine.  _

_ I’m trapped here.  _

_ I have to see it all,  _

_ feel it all,  _

_ hear it all,  _

_ smell it all. _

And it came, a thought so horrifying that even in the confines of his mind, he was scarcely able to give voice to it:   _ What if I like it? _

 

If he hadn’t broken before, he would have now.

 

_ Good to know _ .  From the cage of Dean’s skull, Alastair’s sadistic lisp whispered to the hunter’s soul.

 

* * *

  
  


Aza-rah stared at Dean, mouth open, clearly awed.  “Was that...did you just….”

Dean felt his lips lift, heard Alastair’s words spoken with the hunter’s clear diction.  “Yes. I forced an orgrasm on him. He hates it when I do that.”

A flush lit  her cheeks, and she licked her lips.  “Could you...Do I…”

Alastair chuckled, and Dean’s hand rose to caress the perfect skin of the woman’s cheek.  “Of course. Hell is for sinners, after all.”

His hand dropped, the other rising, razor glinting in the candlelight that Alastair favored.  “But first: atonement.” Dean felt himself wink. “Because it’s  _ my  _ hell, too.”

 

* * *

 

 

Pale skin, so perfect, without a single blemish.  Dean watched the blade slide along it, the thin red line like ink from a pen, her screams and pleas easing an ache he hadn’t known he’d been feeling.  

 

_ You’ve always been satisfyingly brutal, Dean,  _ Alastair whispered into his vessel’s mind.  _  What you lack is finesse. _

 

He smiled grimly as he carved his initials into her breast.

 


End file.
